She dropped out of Florissant Valley Community College and the University of Missouri,[2] soon after to serve in the United States Air Force from 1980 to 1992 as an intelligence officer.
It describes a drive-by shooting that left her nephew paralyzed, and the family's ambivalence and frustration in knowing the shooter was a fellow African American.
Her work has since appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times Magazine, Good Housekeeping, VIBE, Mother Jones, Slate, The Village Voice, Salon and many other publications.
After giving up her personal blog in September 2007, Dickerson announced she will become a blogger for Mother Jones magazine.
She attracted some attention, as well as accusations of race baiting, in 2007 by declaring that because Democratic president Barack Obama is not a descendant of West Africans brought involuntarily to the United States as slaves, he is not "black.