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Do You Have Your 'Hood Pass?
Earlier this month, President Barack Obama aroused some controversy by checking “African American” on his U.S. Census form. He’s black, some say. No, he’s half-white, declare others. If blackness is more of a social construct than a biological one, what are its social definitions? Its dating and marriage choices? An identification fostered on Hawaiian basketball…
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Our Kind of Vacation
As the first family heads to Martha’s Vineyard for their first first-family vacation, the island is still all aflutter over cultural critic Touré’s New York magazine feature characterizing black Vineyarders as a bunch of self-segregating snobs. Blacks who make the island off the coast of Cape Cod their summer home have not felt this misunderstood…
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But My Best Friend Is Black!
During the presidential campaign, then-Sen. Joe Biden made an off-the-cuff observation that his rival, then-Sen. Barack Obama was “… clean …” and “… articulate …” Then Don Imus slurred the Rutgers University’s women’s basketball team. Then the managers of the Valley Swim Club banned black campers from swimming at their pool. And let us not…
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Why Bono, Madonna and Brangelina Cannot Save Africa
Traditional proverb: Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime. In Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working And How There is a Better Way For Africa, former Goldman Sachs and World Bank employee Dr. Dambisa Moyo adeptly posits…
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A Meaningful Obama Book
We are now two weeks into the presidency of Barack Obama, and for many of us, the new reality is still what one blogger described as a “fragmentation bomb,” which keeps exploding in unexpected moments. It’s Obama’s smiling face being printed everywhere like currency. Malia’s twists. Visions of Grandma Robinson getting pampered by White House…
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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, (Gotham Books)makes a compelling case that on one night, in the midst of unspeakable tragedy, he was.…
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Magical Negro in Chief
By now we’ve become familiar with the Negro Spirit Guide in pop culture. Think Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost, Sister Act and The Long Walk Home. Laurence Fishburne in Searching for Bobby Fischer and The Matrix. The Matrix was a twofer: Fishburne leads Keanu Reeves’ character to another black guide, Gloria Foster. Sidney Poitier made a…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
