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Playing the National Anthem Before Sporting Events Is a Stupid and Silly Tradition and We Need to Stop Doing It
My nephew is the starting point guard for his high school basketball team. I try to make as many games as I can, which means I’ve spent (and will be spending) many Tuesday and Friday evenings this winter in various high school gymnasiums throughout Western Pennsylvania. I was in one of these gyms last night…
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Men Who Were Also ‘About to Buy NBC, Tho,’ Ranked
10. New York Knick Charles Smith, who’s still the only ball player in recorded history to get his shit punched under the rim the exact-same way four consecutive times. 9. That Kappa at the last cookout you went to who got picked last for co-ed kickball and got mad and broke all of the candy…
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35 Questions for the People Having Sex Underneath My Living Room Window at 1 in the Morning Last Night
I was up late last night (1 a.m.-ish) doing book stuff, sitting on one of the couches in our living room, and I heard some sounds coming from out the window. We live near a bar, a park and a YMCA that houses people, so slight noise from foot traffic after midnight isn’t that uncommon.…
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Cornel West Seems to Believe Ta-Nehisi Coates Is Writing From the Sidelines, but Sidelines Don’t Exist for Black People
I’m writing this from the third floor of the brownstone in Pittsburgh’s Northside that my wife and I have been renting for a year and a half now. I’m in a bedroom that has been repurposed as both my office and my de facto closet. My daughter’s bedroom is on the same floor, and the…
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Each Time I Watch This Video of 16-Year-Old Ayrton Little Learning He Was Accepted Into Harvard, a Ghost or Something Near Me Cuts an Onion
Earlier today, I came across a video on my Facebook feed of 16-year-old Ayrton Little learning that he was accepted into Harvard University. In the video, several of his classmates are in the room with him, and they all erupt with joy when he receives some sort of confirmation on the computer he’s browsing. The…
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Black Thought’s Beautiful Mind
I was part of a conversation last week with two writers of color in which the concept of genius in art was discussed—specifically, how white men have anointed themselves both the sole possessors and the arbiters of it and how reluctant they can be to consider works created by people of color to be worthy…
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Why Don’t You Know How to Play Spades? An Important Question
Over the next couple of weeks, families all over the country will congregate to observe and celebrate whichever holiday those particular families observe and celebrate. Some of these families will be black—including mine—and in these particular holiday celebrations, there may be many unique things present, including (but not limited to) … Dining room tables with…
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New Orleans Saints Season Ticket Holder Sues Team Because of Anthem Kneeling, Then Drowns in Tub of Salty White Tears
A man named “Lee Dragna” filed a lawsuit against the New Orleans Saints in which he claimed that the protests during the national anthem upset him and his family so much that he was unable to enjoy the games. I am not completely convinced that this lawsuit is a real thing—or even that “Lee Dragna”…
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White People Need to Be Better People
The vast—the overwhelming—majority of white people living in a state in the United States of America in 2017 voted Tuesday for an alleged serial pedophile; a sentient cauldron of microwaved racist lettuce who said, out of his own wretched mouth, that every amendment after the 10th wrecked “the form of government that our forefathers intended”;…
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A Viral Story About a Bullied White Boy and His Probably Racist, ‘MAGA’ Scamming Mom Is the Perfect Way to End 2017
Last week, Panama Jackson asked which Bad Boy song was the most quintessentially Bad Boy. Not the best or most important song from that label and that era, but the one that best encapsulated Bad Boy’s general ethos and spirit. I disagreed with his top choice (he chose “Mo Money, Mo Problems”—I would have chosen…
