Do You Have Your 'Hood Pass?

April 29, 2010

A "chitlin' test" for the MTV generation.  

Our Kind of Vacation

The class warfare debate that breaks out every summer when black people head to Martha's Vineyard always misses the point. For most people, Oak Bluffs is about family tradition.

But My Best Friend Is Black!

Racism is not an either/or proposition. When did the R-word become as offensive as the N-word?

Why Bono, Madonna and Brangelina Cannot Save Africa

The new book Dead Aid takes dead aim on Western aid to Africa and argues—convincingly—that white benevolence has done more harm than good to Africa’s struggling economies.

A Meaningful Obama Book

Most Obama books are pegged to politics, history or culture. Jabari Asim’s ‘What Obama Means’ successfully tackles all three. In the coming wave of books on the new president, this one will stand the test of time.

The Hardest Working Man

In 1969, James Brown graced the cover of LOOK magazine, with the headline "Is This The Most Powerful Black Man in America?" James Sullivan's new biography, The Hardest Working Man: How James Brown Saved The Soul of America, makes a compelling case that on one night, in the midst of unspeakable tragedy, he was.

Magical Negro in Chief

Now, some commentators, most notably Tina Brown of The Daily Beast, seem to believe we've elected a magical Negro Spirit Guide as president. "This has been an election full of magic. White Magic that only the black man from everywhere and nowhere could perform," Brown declared after Obama's win. President-elect Barack Obama's biracial birth, fatherless childhood outside the contiguous United States and meteoric rise is indeed the stuff of mythology. But there is something dizzying about the heights of Obama's other-worldly pedestal. And—if he continues to follow another narrative arc laid out in popular culture—the depths to which he will inevitably fall. Will this character rescue the world in the end? Or will he become consumed by an unseen, dark inner soul?