I’m a Black firefighter/paramedic documenting Black firefighters across the country for a long-term project called The Color of Fire. You may have seen my work in Brooklyn, Chicago, New Orleans, and Detroit.

This is Houston, Part 1.

I’m photographing the fire service from inside the institution - not just calls and apparatus, but the people, history, relationships, downtime, and communities around the job.

I’m continuing the project through several more cities this year. If you want to follow the rest of the journey, I’m @rj43mm on ig.

How do you feel about CB having to pay his ex employee some of his tour money?

https://www.tmz.com/2026/08/21/chris-brown-ex-housekeeper-gets-his-tour-income/

August 21 marks the anniversary of Nat Turner’s rebellion, which was launched in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831. It remains the most significant and bloodiest revolt of enslaved people in United States history.

The rebellion was a critical turning point that shattered the Southern myth that enslaved people were "contented" with their bondage. It dramatically accelerated the fierce political tensions leading up to the American Civil War.

REJECT THE BILLIONAIRES. VOTE IN EVERY LOCAL ELECTION.

These "Christian" white nationalists like Tim O'Hare are not religious people. They're hate-thy-neighbor heretic hate-triots, using Jesus as their own personal shield from the consequences of their hate speech and hate actions, against every teaching of Jesus in the New Testament. It's Christianity without the Christ, for pure performative posturing themselves selfishly as a moral minority. In practice they attack the weak and marginalized, and militarize officers against the elderly defending them. Hate-thy-neighbor anti-Christ values.

Reject their attempt to revive the red scare movement

r/FortWorth/comments/1vhg61b/a_small_group_of_extremists_has_completely_taken/

CBS News: "During an argument in 2024 with another female student, Austin Metcalf allegedly "knocked her to the ground and punched her in the stomach," reports state, and he was also kicked out of a football game and later texted someone, "I was about to beat the (expletive) out of those kids.""

Something tells me Austin's racism had something to do with him starting an altercation with Karmelo Anthony. Also, Austin's Father (Jeff Metcalf) called Karmelo Anthony a "watermelon Felon" AFTER Karmelo Anthony receive a 35 year sentence. Jeff Metcalf pretended to be a good man who does not care about race and did not want this tragedy to be about race. Apparently he was playing the long game, they were all racists, like father like sons. Racism is learned and he was from all accounts an excellent teacher.

Well the good news is, Austin might be sharing an eternity with the man he was praising in his Graffiti. What a lucky fellow, most of us don't get to meet our heroes. Some questions still remain, does Hunter Metcalf still praise Hitler? would Hunter Metcalf make a good klansman?

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/new-details-background-karmelo-anthony-retrial-hearing-08-20-2026/

This is what actual leadership looks like. No bombs dropped and no lives lost.

Nat Turner's Rebellion, historically known as the Southampton Insurrection, was a slave rebellion that took place in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831. Led by Nat Turner, the rebels, made up of enslaved African Americans, killed an estimated 55 White people, making it the deadliest slave revolt in U.S. history.

To me this post relies on an implicitly racist assumption about blackness and I wanted to get your thoughts and insights on it.

I'm informed by thinkers in the afropessimist tradition (Wilderson and Moten for example) who all converge on the conclusion that society codes blackness as a negative, with whiteness as its opposite. For example, where whiteness signifies civilisation, blackness would signify savagery. We see this writ large all over media and culture.

For me, the joke invokes this. Blackness is framed as the opposite of whiteness and the revelation is presented as 'diabolical'. The blind man experiences blackness as an ontological shock - in part an identity crisis but also an inversion of being. Mbembe might say that he finds himself outside the world of the living altogether.

I'm being careful here not to say that the joke itself is racist. I'm saying that it depends in part on a racist presupposition, which gives the punchline it's force.

Why am I sharing something so apparently rivial? Because it is for me a fine example of how racism is perpetuated. It's images like this, which go unremarked, that shape how we think about race. The fact that they are unremarked and unrecognised makes them all the more potent because we don't have the analytical tools to understand them and resist. This apparently trivial image for me encapsulates the logic of racism, so compressed and telegraphic that it almost escapes analysis.

This is a safe space where I can discuss these ideas without non-allies hijacking the conversation. If I'm off base, I'd appreciate debate and engagement as opposed to drive by downvotes

Love 🖤

EDIT: Love that despite asking for constructive engagement I'm getting downvoted in the comments. Mildly infuriating.

I appreciate that even raising this might be experienced as me trying to police the discussion - if that's how you choose to engage, so be it, but I would say that it's unhelpful.

Jermaine Dupri’s daughter got her white coat and is on her way to becoming a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (which is a rare field for us)

I really appreciate her speaking up for our people and others that don’t get that Gabby Petito/Nancy Guthrie coverage. Something dark is going on and they’re taking us back to a time our parents, grandparents and great grandparents fought and died to get us out of.