As a warning, “gone ‘head now” ranks right up there alongside timeless pieces of verbal caution tape such as “I ain’t gonna tell you no more” and “I’m finna go to my car; don’t be here when I get back.” Not only does “gone ‘head now” give the listener the opportunity to apologize for their misdeeds or atone for their actions, but it also serves as a preliminary injunctive order. No matter what offense you have committed, if someone who lives within spitting distance of a ditch bank presents you with the “gone ‘head now” option, take it. Now.

Or not.

My first gon’ head encounter was with my cousin Derrick, who we called “Geet” (Look, I don’t know either. That’s not how Black nicknames work). He was a couple of years older than me, and he could fight. I’ve never actually seen Geet fight. I’ve never even heard a story about him fighting. No one has ever even told me that Geet was good at fighting. But anyone who ever met Geet would immediately understand that he could scrap. He just gave off “this nigga can fight” vibes. With Geet, the fighting ability was implied.

I didn’t believe it.

I didn’t necessarily disbelieve the “Geet’ll whip that ass” mythology. But as an unbiased observer who operates on facts and data, I had no visual evidence or firsthand testimony of my cousin’s fisticuffian expertise. So I refused to fall for the “Geet got hands.” I was a Geet skeptic. Of course, I understood the hazards of testing my cousin’s fighting ability in a real-world situation, so I didn’t fuck around with Geet, just in case. I basically just treated him like a cousin…

Until the Dookiehead Affair.

If you’re expecting an extremely hilarious story with juvenile twists and turns, I’m sorry. This one was simple. A bird shat on Geet’s head. That’s it. We were standing in the backyard with our cousins and a few other boys from the neighborhood when, suddenly, doo doo was on Geet’s head. And face. And probably on his lips.

We didn’t see it fall from the sky. It just magically appeared out of nowhere. One second, Geet was standing there; the next, his high-top fade had an avian whipped-cream topping. We didn’t even notice it until he put his hand on his head and yelled: “A bird dookied on me.”

Now, here is where my Geet agnosticism should have kicked in, because literally no one laughed. They just stood there staring at my fecal-faced cousin as if having pigeon poop spontaneously appear on your head was an everyday occurrence. Looking back, this is when I should have known that Geet could fight, because they just stood there as if sometimes it rains, sometimes it snows, and sometimes, God opens up the windows of heaven and pours a little butt juice on his beloved children.

Oh, how I guffawed!

Just as the universe showered down caca on my cousin, the gods of roasting hit me with a thunderous horde of doo-doo-related whimsy. I tomfooled. I buffooned. I shenanigged and shenniganed. “I knew you had shit for brains!” I rejoiced. “You got some dookie on your lips. That must be the early bird they were talking about. Does it taste like worms? ”

By the time he had reached the “gone ‘head,” I was in the zone. “How do you know it wasn’t semen?” I asked. “What if you’re pregnant? Can you get pregnant in the mouth? What you gonna name the birdmouth baby? Look on the bright side: Aunt Linda ain’t never gonna have to buy no eggs!”

By this time, people were slowly backing away as if my Bruce Banner was about to turn into the “‘credible Hulk” (which is what we called him in South Carolina). Theoretically, I knew my cousin had reached his breaking point. But I was too far in my bag. So when Geet affixed a “now” to his third and final “gone head,” I still had one piece of my seemingly infinite jest that just had to be released:

“Oh my God, I just realized something,” I said with all the awe and wonder I could muster.

“CHICKEN LITTLE WAS RIGHT!”

Bloop.

My cousin Geet punched me right in the mouth. I can only thank my mother for making sure I got my daily recommended dose of calcium because I have no idea how my teeth didn’t fall out. I didn’t even know teeth could ache—not the nerves in my gums and mouth, but the individual molars, incisors and canines. I truly believe the Dookiehead Affair is why I’m one of the few adults who didn’t need dental surgery. My cousin knocked the wisdom out of my teeth when I was 10.

But Geet didn’t stop there; he tuned me up real good. I punched back aimlessly, but it was no use. He didn’t even talk or say, “Take that!” He just surgically whipped the wisecracks out of me.

Y’all, my cousin Geet can fight!

When I stumbled into the house all bloody-nosed and sore-toothed, my mom and grandmama immediately began screaming. Was I lynched by the Klan? Had our neighborhood become gang-infested? Were mountain lions native to South Carolina? Because, obviously, there was a tiger involved.

“I told him to leave me ‘lone, Aunt Dot,” my cousin Geet said nonchalantly.

“Shole did,” my snitching sister Sean chimed in, superchalantly. “Geet said ‘gone head now’ three times.”

“Well, you can’t start a fire and then whine about getting burned,” my mama said, returning to washing dishes. “If you soak that shirt in the sink, the blood might come…"

“Wait, Geet,” my mom said quizzically. “What in the world is that white stuff in your hair?”

I didn’t say a word.

See?

Sometimes, violence is the answer.

This story is about Stephen A. Smith.

Today’s Reading List

• Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Umoja Noble

• Your phone isn’t secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing by Rich Haridy

• NABJ did the white thing by Michael Harriot

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Happy Black August, y’all.

Tuesday night, state Rep. Angie Nixon won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Florida. Her opponent had raised $16 million. Nixon had raised just under a million.

She won by double digits anyway.

I’m not going to stand here in Black August and pretend November will be easy. She’s facing an incumbent with real money, in a state where the GOP holds a real registration edge, in a state Democrats have treated like a lost cause for a generation. The road ahead is steep, and it deserves to be named honestly, not waved away. But steep roads and closed doors are not the same thing. This campaign has already handed us something we needed regardless of how November turns out.

Three lessons. Let’s get into them.

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Did your therapist get her “doctorial” from the Kevin Samuel School for High Value Women?

Is your life coach on TikTok explaining why wearing a bonnet to class is a form of self-care?

Introducing the ContrabandCamp Clinic for Actual Psychology!

Whether it’s online trolls, uninformed …

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On Monday, the Trump administration quietly solved America’s systemic racism problem.

The Associated Press reports:

How many women hold executive-level positions at top U.S. companies? What is the racial and ethnic breakdown of those roles? What is the gender and racial breakdown of the lowest-paid roles at those companies?

The Trump administrati…

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Touring across 19th-century Europe and the United States, the legendary author and orator Frederick Douglass drafted jokes to draft audiences into the roiling war against slavery. A revolutionary entertainer, Douglass made his audiences laugh until their sides hurt so that they would side with the moral crusade for abolitionism.​

In his…

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On Saturday Night, the National Association of Black Journalists bestowed its annual Thumbs Down Award to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, CBS News, Circle City Broadcasting/WISH-TV CEO DuJuan McCoy, the Washington Post and this guy:

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“I’m willing to bet you’ve never invited a Negro boy to your home and that there isn’t one Negro kid among all your friends…Wouldn’t it be something to cheer about if the paper hired Negro copyboys and gave them the same sort of chance you and your friends are getting in the city room — even letting them prove their talent as members of your [in-house] Timesweek staff?”

— George Streator, the first Black journalist to work for the New York Times.

The more you study the history of white people in America, the harder it is to explain the privilege, ineptitude and cowardice that permeate Caucasian culture.

For instance, when white journalist Henry Jarvis Raymond and financiers George Jones and Edward Wesley founded the New York Times in 1851, Black journalists didn’t exist. Sure, there were already multiple Black newspapers, including Freedom’s Journal, whose office was literally next door to the Times’ founders, but how were these great white intrepid journalists supposed to know that?

Or maybe Black journalists weren’t very good. Black newspapers like The New York Age regularly outsold the Times, but the inability to find Black reporters was clearly a problem. Or maybe it was too dangerous to hire Black journalists. The Times would publish articles by Black freelancers like George Edmund Haynes. But he graduated from an inferior college no one in New York had ever heard of, called Columbia University. Or maybe white people didn’t see race until Haynes began writing freelance stories about this nationwide terrorist campaign called the Red Summer of 1919; no one had heard about the greatest sociologist in the history of this country (except for the president of the United States, of course).

The New York Times didn’t employ a single Black journalist for its first 95 years of existence. The Washington Post took 75 years to hire its first Black journalist, Simeon Booker and fired him before he uncovered a story down in Mississippi about a boy named Emmett Till. The fact that every single editor, owner, manager, executive and HR person at every major newspaper in America simultaneously overlooked every Black reporter in the entire country while millions of other white people didn’t say anything is probably a coincidence.

There’s only one other logical explanation:

Either the white people who made those decisions—and their readers—are stupid, cowards who are bad at their jobs...

Or they’re racist.

But that’s not the remarkable part.

The most astonishing thing about Black history is how unremarkable our trailblazers are. Frederick Douglass did not graduate from Harvard with a degree in abolition. Harriet Tubman didn’t study maps or spend her childhood hiding geography books under her skirt. And on Dec. 12, 1975, 44 Black reporters, editors and staffers working at major news outlets started the National Association of Black Journalists—the world’s largest and oldest organization for…you know.

Some of the founders include:

• Paul Delaney, the Times' first Washington Bureau correspondent

• Mal Johnson, a pioneering broadcast journalist at Cox Broadcasting.

• Vernon Jarrett, the first Black syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune

• Max Robinson, the first Black network news anchor

They weren’t organizers or strategists. They weren’t brave pioneers or courageous rulebreakers. They were just Black people who wanted other Black people to have opportunities.

Can you imagine?

Today’s Reading List:

• The 1904 Summer Olympics Men’s Marathon

• Can humans spontaneously combust? The baffling cases explained. by Lauren Leffer.

• Bonus: Here’s Why You’re Wrong by Michael Harriot, Panama Jackson and Touré

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"[T]he having of slaves taught to wr…

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Kings Landing, Westeros, Aug. 9, 2026 – The Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lady of the Seven Kingdoms, Protector of the Realm, Drainer of Swamps, Stopper of Steals, Grabber of Pussies, Very Stable Genius and Baddest Bitch to Ever Mount a Dragon added a few more titles to her name after sweeping the major categories at the highly coveted WHITEFOLK Awards.

Originally called the Yakubian Image Awards, the ceremony was a joint venture between Westeros Honors for Iron Throne Enthusiasts (WHITE) and the Federation to Oppress the Lowborn in the Kingdom (FOLK). The finalists were announced during the annual WHITEFOLK Correspondents’ Dinner, where Rhaenyra Targaryen took home awards for Karen of the Year, Fascist of the Year and the Monarch Most Likely to Crash Out.

Many industry experts were shocked to discover that the queen of the dragon riders had swept the highest honors after serving less than a month. Her supporters, however, denied reports that she had sent a raven to the WHITEFOLK’s governor asking him to “find” 11,780 votes.

“I was chosen by God, my daddy and the richest families in the Seven Kingdoms,” the newly installed queen said in her acceptance speech. “Even the Founding Fathers said the person with the most dragons should be queen. They didn’t actually write it down but, trust me, I saw it in a dream.”

Appearing before a crowd that Targaryen administration officials called “the largest crowd to ever gather at the Mall on Westeros,” the queen’s speech followed a brief, private meeting with faith leaders (who strangely did not respond to ContrabandCamp’s request for comments). Accompanied by her curiously dark-haired son and clad in a custom suit of armor from Louys Vuytton’s Darth Batman collection, the monarch also took the opportunity to announce that she was also running for Messiah.

“I am the prince that was promised,” she told the audience.

The stunning awards sent shockwaves throughout the realm. Most analysts expected Alicent Hightower to take home the Karen of the Year award for her outstanding attempts at poisoning her son Aemond, sending her son Daeron to live with a homicidal maniac, trying to perform a nonconsensual moon tea abortion on her daughter Helaena and attempting to abandon another grandchild. Lady Jeyne Arryn was a dark horse for leading the Seven Kingdoms in moon-door evacuations while Rhaena Targaryen expected a few votes for her incessant whining about her rescue dragon.

“I didn’t rescue Sheepstealer,” she explained. “He rescued me.”

Perhaps the biggest shock came when Rhaenyra was awarded the trophy for Most Outstanding Fascist. “This is the same old Targaryen bullshit,” Ormund Hightower said in a posthumous statement. “I never thought I’d see the day when the WHITEFOLKs would become a DEI award.”

Here is the complete list of nominees and winners.

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With hints of Juneteenth, Kwanzaa and Black History Month, but also something very different, Black August is a time to honor Black political prisoners, freedom fighters, radicals and revolutionaries past and present, and commemorate the struggle against racist oppression, colonialism and imperialism. The fight for Black freedom and resistance to state violence and repression is ongoing, and we live in a time when liberation should be on our minds—all the time.

In Mississippi, the suspicious deaths of Nolan Xavier Wells and Tasia Fortune, who was recently found hanging from a tree, are a reminder that Black people are neither safe nor free. From the #BlackLivesMatter response to Mike Brown in Ferguson, George Floyd in Minneapolis, Breonna Taylor in Louisville and many others, to the Montgomery Riverfront Brawl and the mobilization against ICE, Cop City and the Gaza genocide, Black resistance is in full view.

Black August originated in the American gulags, specifically San Quentin State Prison in California. In 1979, the Black Guerilla Family—a group of Black Power revolutionaries imprisoned in San Quentin—started Black August to commemorate and honor fallen comrades such as George Jackson, Jonathan Jackson, William Christmas, Khatari Gaulden, James McClain, W.L. Nolan and other prison revolutionaries who were assassinated by the state.

During the month of Black August, participants engage in the principles of “study, fast, train, fight.” People may consider fasting and exercise, activism, organizing and strengthening community ties, education and political study.

“This month is a time to reflect and learn about the legacies of Black revolutionaries, while we rededicate ourselves to the protracted struggles against white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism. We study, plan, and pledge to continue the work and fight for Black liberation,” said Monifa Bandele of MomsRising.

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We were Black.

That’s it. And in America, that is enough to bind you together. Although Black people are not a monolith, if you are Black, America doesn’t care. Whether you are an anti-capitalist atheist who turns the Black Student Union into a Black Power organization or a churchgoing conservative who sings in your college gospel choir, this country’s treatment of Black people is pretty monolithic as fuck. In many cases, one’s ability to build community is a product of a shared, common experience

And sometimes, it’s hate.

My sophomore year, three of my friends and I rented an apartment together. A few weeks into the semester, one of our mutual day-ones asked if her boyfriend could stay with us for a few days. We didn’t mind “until a few days” turned into weeks, and the dude was still there! He wasn’t in school. He wasn’t working. He was just chilling.

Plus, he smoked a pipe.

I’m not talking about marijuana. I’m not even talking about crack (It was the early ’90s, so that would have made a little sense). No, this dude smoked a real deal, Django Unchained, slavemaster pipe. Like the corncob one they gave Frosty before he caught stage-four snowman cancer. Like Sherlock Holmes’ homeboy. But our pipe-smoking freeloader didn’t solve mysteries. All he did was hoop and make sandwiches.

Of course, we were nice to him. He was a friend of our friend, which made him part of our community. He was arrogant, light-skinned and had hair so wavy that you could see his scalp when you were up close—like when white people get out of the swimming pool. Then, one of us came home, and he had a girl over. Not our friend, mind you! Another girl!

We couldn’t stand that dude. We continued to treat him OK, but we sometimes fantasized, in private, about whipping his ass for eating gallon-sized bowls of cereal. And, as if that weren’t bad enough, he once said that Color Me Badd was better than New Edition!

Now, our condo/apartment had a basketball court, and Al B. Pipe Smoker was there every day. He wasn’t very good, but he was tall, so he rebounded and played defense (which is what guys who can’t hoop always say, “But I be rebounding, tho.”). But since we always needed five players, we would let Sherlock Homebody run with us. Plus, our place wasn’t near the campus, so there would be random hood dudes from around town playing.

Now, I know that sports is supposed to be a sanctuary. You’re supposed to be able to talk shit on the basketball court—up to a point. There is an invisible line that most Black people know not to cross. Especially when hood niggas are present.

Well, one day, we were on the court and hood niggas were present.

Pipeboy ran with our team against the hood niggas and promptly commenced talking mad shit. I don’t know if he grew up in a light-skinned community of people with hair so good they didn’t need Dax grease, or if he just didn’t notice that a few of our opponents had prepared for the pickup game by wrapping their guns in their durags, but he didn’t seem to care about crossing the shit-talking red line. I was gonna say something to him, but I glanced at my roommates and saw the unmistakable look of “fuck it” in his eyes.

Rowdy Roddy Piper was throwing up trash shots and getting them blocked. Everyone could see his game was trash (he do be rebounding, tho.). But late in the game, Rowdy Roddy Piper went up and blocked the king of the hood niggas’ shit into the next census block and screamed…

Hold up. Wait a minute.

Now everyone knows that you can’t talk about people’s mothers in the Black community. We don’t fuck around about our mamas. Maybe octaroonish suburbanites don’t know this, but on historically Black basketball courts, talking about people’s fathers is also frowned upon. Someone’s father is always recently deceased or just locked up.

So I was genuinely surprised when the brick-laying pipe smoker smacked the ball and said the most aggressive thing I’ve ever heard:

“Fuck yo daddy!” He snarled

That’s it. There was no context. It wasn’t the lighting round of a daddy-insult contest that had been brewing all afternoon. Scotty Pipin,’ just out of the blue, decided to conjure up a daddy-fuck.

My roommates were more appalled than I was. None of us said anything. We just looked at each other, communicating “he’s on his own,” telepathically.

Y’all, the durag thug whipped the light-skint off that the pipesman!

I mean, he put hands on that young man! He offered ALL the smoke that boy had been wanting from that pipe. He dragged Pipey Longstocking so bad that he was lucky it happened in Alabama; I’m pretty sure it was a hate crime in a blue state. And as this Black-on-Black violence commenced in the negro community, we all just stood there and watched with delight.

Piper called his girlfriend and told him he “got jumped,” so she came over and started crying. Then all my friends came over because they thought we got jumped. One of the neighbors saw this impromptu convening of negroes and negresses and called the police. It was so much chaos and noise, and right then and there, we decided this wavy-haired, pipe-smoking motherfucker had to go. When we told him, he looked up at us, pipe still dangling from his lips and said:

“Man, I thought we was homeboys.”

I wanted to fight him again. But instead, I responded: “Man….fuck yo daddy,” which cracked my official roommates up and confused everyone else.

Anyway, the pipe smoker and our homegirl eventually got married. All the day-ones were invited to the wedding except for me and the other three roommates, which we all understood.

After all, you can’t trust any man who wouldn’t fight to protect a member of his community…

Especially if they disrespected your daddy.

He do be rebounding, tho.

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I remember my first day as a Black boy.

Before I earned enough years to express my opinions when grown folks were talking, I was just Mikey. A “youngin’.” A lactose-intolerant, still-wet-behind-the-ears kid with Similac on his breath and a hard head that, for some reason, contribute…

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If one white person moves onto Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., does that automatically mean they gentrified a Black neighborhood? If so, did Brown v. Board colonize white educational institutions? Is it even fair to call Christopher Columbus…

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Leaders of the reptile community are calling out one of television’s biggest shows for promoting racism, far-right propaganda and political misinformation in season three’s seventh episode of House of the Dragon.

“We condemn HBO for depicting our constituents as lawless, disobedient and violent,” read a statement from the Dragon National Committee (DNC). “Our members have always been passionate about the direction of the country and remain united in our ultimate goal: to regain power, restore peace and usher in an era of peace and prosperity for all.”

While DNC leaders dispute the “dragons in disarray" narrative, many rank-and-file party members viewed the party’s tepid response as a symptom of the party’s reluctance to confront the bigotry within its own ranks. Meanwhile, right-wing social media users said the episode showed how Blacks-on-Blacks violence, Dragon Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and radical left-wingers posed a threat to the Seven Kingdoms.

To examine this growing political divide, ContrabandCamp spoke with members of the dragon community as well as some of the participants who attended the bipartisan meeting of flamethrowers on Sunday night. Together, these accounts paint a picture of a dragon community divided over politics, loyalty and battle over the future of the nation.

Here’s what they had to say:

Sheepstealer Admits Ties to ANTIFA

“First off, let’s get this clear: I support ANTIFA. ,” explained Dragon Socialists of America (DSA) President Sheep Stiller. “Not only do I want to Abolish the Neglect, Torture and Incarceration of Flying Animals, I am also anti-fascist, anti-famine, and anti-false queens from a family of fair-headed fascists who fashioned themselves as fake gods to scare the fanboys who believed their fables.

“That’s what’s wrong with the left,” Sheepstealer added. “They’re too faint-hearted.”

Although Sheepstealer is technically registered as an independent, the left-leaning flamethrower usually caucuses with the progressives. Some attribute Sheepstealer’s far-left politics to spending his childhood under the protection of the Vale of Arryn’s status as a sanctuary city. Others claim he was radicalized by one of “The Blacks”—namely Rhaena Targaryen. In any case, the party’s mainstream establishment recently began distancing itself from Sheepstealer, accusing him of going rogue and leading a radical left-wing takeover of the party, charges that Sheepstealer vehemently denies.

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Born to a family of Spanish aristocrats, Ayllón gained most of his wealth, status and political power while serving as head colonizer in charge of Spain’s Hispaniola colony. But Ayllón wanted more. Even though he had no experience as an explorer, in 1521, he led an expedition to steal more land. On June 24, 1521, h…

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By all accounts, 1996 was a terrible year for Lida “Stony” Newsom. While the death of her parents in a car accident four years prior was no doubt the worst experience of her life to that point, the events of 1996, well, it’s the stuff Hollywood makes movies about.

Ahem.

In a year—a few months actually—with scant few high points, the lows are said to have inspired the 2002 song, “Get Low,” by Lil Jon & The Eastside Boyz featuring the Ying Yang Twins.

The year started out well. Stony’s little brother Stevie was a January graduate of his high school with plans to attend UCLA, making him the realized hopes and dreams of not only his family, but of the Acorn Projects, where he and his sister both spent time. Family and friends gathered for his graduation party, which became the catalyst that set off a string of events that made Job from the Bible say, “Damn.”

Shortly after breaking the news that not only did he not get a scholarship to UCLA, but he wasn’t even accepted, Stevie was killed by the police in a shootout tied to a bank robbery committed by people from Acorn, including Larenz, a Los Angeles gangster who, a few years prior, killed the boyfriend of Stony’s cousin, Ronnie, as they prepared to drive cross country to Atlanta to start a new life (and see FreakNik with their own eyes). Because Larenz was insane, he had Stevie get the infamous AP (for Acorn Projects) haircut; police mistook Stevie for a bank robber and shot him as he tried to lay the champagne bottle he’d been gifted for graduating high school on the ground. Stony held him in her arms, though by that point, he was long gone.

So far, Stony had lost her parents and her brother, and save for her circle of homegirls, really had nothing left to live for until she met Keith Weston at a bank she was casing. Keith, after the death of her brother, represented a small window of joy and escape, but it would be short-lived.

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When sitting in the passenger seat of a car with a known drug dealer during a high-speed chase, one should always wear a seat belt.

Always.

Thankfully, I came to the realization of this maxim seconds before the tire burst as I was sitting in the passenger seat of a car with a known drug d…

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The hilarious quote not only garnered millions of chuckles, but it began a furious debate in comment sections when flabbergasted Caucasians began a debate about what it means to “sound white …

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The Heritage Foundation, a right-­wing think tank, became famo…

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Nearly a decade ago, cultural critic Damon Young explored a question that had bedeviled the scientific community for centuries:

Do white people have cousins?

Young ultimately concluded that white people do, indeed, have cousins. Unfortunately, his groundbreaking research failed to explain why Caucasian cousin culture is so unde…

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