I'm always down to talk good books so, when my mentor Dr. David Wall Rice, challenged me recently to #TheBookChallenge on Facebook, I was raring to go.
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Examining the connections between the lynchings of yesteryear and the police brutality blacks face today.
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Ferguson coverage by some of the most venerable news sources revealed a mix of bias, laziness and sensationalism. The failings that have resulted are being exposed on the Internet.
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It’s time President Obama step in to protect protesters in Ferguson, Missouri.
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The president’s recent message to a group of African fellows stands in stark contrast to the way he’s consistently addressed black Americans. What gives?
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“My Brother’s Keeper” has some tough work ahead of it, however: In America’s current political and racial climate, the program will be saddled with strengthening interventions while also dispelling comfortable narratives of pathology that have too long been used to justify inaction.
Read More![[COMMENTARY] The GRAMMYs Have No Respect](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52b91b2de4b0749228be9f0e/1390815148680-3626JWQZQQMKQYMB3SRR/465350105.jpg)
By pretty much crowning Macklemore the best rapper of 2013, the GRAMMYs has shown itself to be more than out of touch. When it comes to Hip Hop, the Recording Academy has proven itself to be clueless and downright disrespectful.
Read More![[COMMENTARY] SNL's (REAL) REAL RACE PROBLEM](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52b91b2de4b0749228be9f0e/1390335128474-G05TIRX8IYUTMQUQ33VW/eddie-murphy.jpg)
Over nearly 40 years, 16 of 139 SNL cast members have black. Many have been exceptionally talented. Garrett Morris, Eddie Murphy, Danitra Vance, Damon Wayans, Chris Rock, Tracy Morgan, Maya Rudolph and Kenan Thompson were all legitimate comedians, vetted and proven elsewhere. The problem is, however, that at SNL - and in many major white institutions - talent doesn’t necessarily correlate to success.
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Like many people watching the spectacle unfold online, I was disgusted and angry at first. Then I imagined Sacco’s phone coming out of airplane mode and giggled my a** off.
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Over the weekend, the first black President of the United States landed in, arguably, the capital of black America to speak at the commencement of the nation’s only institution of higher learning dedicated to educating black men. The occasion was a unique opportunity to address issues facing black males in America and was indeed a rousing call to action.
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The campuses of Morehouse College and Spelman College are especially close. In fact, they’re right next to each other. Proximity aside, there’s a special bond between the unofficial brother-sister institutions – one so close that students and alumni affectionately call the pair “SpelHouse.” Recent events, however, threaten to weaken that bond and illuminate old tensions between the schools.
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My grandma, Margie Jean Ramsey, died last summer at 73 after decades of health challenges and having buried a husband and three children. Yes she was sweet, warm even, but she could also be as hard as granite. I learned from her that sometimes we have to be.
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Ultimately, with Django Unchained, Tarantino toys with a magic he doesn’t understand: a blend of images, symbols, memories and suggestions so dangerous that we usually tuck them away like Pandora's box or precede them with trigger warnings.
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It’s been heralded as an instant classic and for good reason. good kid, m.A.A.d. city is one of the most comprehensive Hip-Hop albums since Jay-Z and NaS captivated audiences with their major label debuts. In his, 25-year-old Kendrick Lamar displays a talent for storytelling and lyrical agility head and shoulders over his contemporaries. The kid is clearly talented, the city fucked up. What results when the two meet is a magnum opus that demands recognition.
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He's been "militant." He was called "brother minister" and even "our manhood, our living black manhood," the latter by Ossie Davis in his eloquent eulogy of the slain leader. It seems that for a host of people and one reason or the other, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (better known as Malcolm X) has occupied several spaces in the public imagination.
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Black Americans have once again taken mainstream culture and flipped it with the advent of social media technology. In 140 characters, liked, tagged, and streamed, Black thought leaders are taking to the net for challenge and change in the 21st century.
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