Selected Public Writing

“Bad Beef,” Public Books (January 2025)

“You Must Learn: Teaching 50 Years of Hip-Hop History,” AHA Perspectives on History (January 2024).
“Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Lawbreaker,” Offshoot (April 2022) (Pamphlet).
“What Obama Gets Wrong about ‘Defund the Police,'” CNN (December 2020).
“Against State Capture,” Toward Freedom (September 2020).
“Defund the Police: Protest Slogans and the Terms of Debate,” AHA Perspectives Daily (June 2020).
“A Socialist Oasis In Detroit In The 1970s?” Metropole: The Official Blog of the Urban History Association (November 2019).
“Assessing Police Reform in Ann Arbor Five Years After Aura Rosser’s Murder,” Medium.com (November 2019).
“The Riots Goin’ On: Media and the Riots: 1968 and now,” The Common Reader (July 2018).
“White liberals love political rap — when the rapper is white,” Washington Post (November 2017)

The Baffler
“It’s Bigger than Hip-Hop,” No. 72 (January 2024).
“After Floyd,” No. 65 (October 2022).

Truthout (Selected)
“Biden Uses State of the Union to Double Down on Failed Idea of Police Reforms” (February 2023).
“We Must Refuse “Normal Life” After Police Violence Like Killing of Tyre Nichols” (January 2023).
“Democracy Can’t Be Reduced to Voting in 2022 — We Must Build the Future We Want” (September 2022).
“Juneteenth Reminds Us “In Between” Moments Are as Important as Uprisings” (June 2022).

See my Truthout author page for more articles.

Black Perspectives (Selected)
“A #HipHop50 Syllabus” (August 2023).
“Gender and the Politics of Anti-Black State Violence” (July 2018).
“Progressive Movements and the Importance of Failure” (May 2018).

See my Black Perspectives author page for more articles.

Nursing Clio (Selected)
“Woke Kids on Campus: Netflix’s Dear White People” (June 2017).
“Teaching in an Era of Black Lives Matter” (August 2016).
“Lessons from the Funky Diabetic: Phife Dawg as Reluctant Health Rap Pioneer” (April 2016).
“Police Brutality, Mental Illness, and Race in the Age of Mass Incarceration” (June 2015).
“In Between Cultural Appropriation, Racism, and Sexism: Azealia Banks and the Erasure of Black Women in Rap” (January 2015).
“Learning from Lyndon: How America Should Respond to Ferguson” (September 2014).
“Hip Hop Breaks Silence on Mental Health: Pharoahe Monch’s Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” (May 2014).

See my Nursing Clio author page for more articles.

Political Organizing
“Guest Column: UM President Should ‘Close the Gap in Trust’ — Faculty Member,” Deadline Detroit, February 9, 2017.

Garrett Felber & Austin McCoy, “The Meaning of Declining Black Enrollment at the University of Michigan,” Medium.com, December 10, 2014.

Garrett Felber & Austin McCoy, “Viewpoint: Student protest and affirmative action,” Michigan Daily, October 15, 2013.