Hello. My name is Shani Hilton and I’m stoked to be here with you all this week as a guest blogger for TAPPED. While you gird your loins for my bombastic blogging, I’ll tell you a little bit about myself. I’m a Californian from America’s most miserable city — this was before it topped the list of metropolitan areas with the highest foreclosure rates — but I fled easterly to pick up a journalism degree from Howard University in D.C. Now I reside in Central New Jersey where I’m employed by an academic institution.

In the geography of the World Wide Web, I come to you from PostBourgie, a blog that our illustrious founder describes as “a running, semi-orderly conversation about class and politics and media and gender and whatever else we can think of.” That sums up what I do pretty well. At PB I’ve written about natural hair; race and gender tropes on Fox’s Glee; Michael Steele’s stop at my alma mater; and once, even, a defense of Sarah Palin (I stood by it for 10 days until she made it clear she was indefensible).

A few things I believe in: gender equality, home cooking, being nice to one’s parents, and that Black Thought is the best rapper in the game right now. I’m not much of a wonk — though I’ve developed many a wonk crush on Prospect writers — but I am a very curious person, and I’m looking forward to sharing that curiosity with all of you.

Shani O. Hilton

Shani Hilton is associate editor of Campus Progress. You can find her blogging here.