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Redefining Our Relationship With Tiger Woods
We can only imagine what Thanksgiving was like last year in the Tiger Woods household, which since then has shrunk from a family of four to a bachelor pad. A National Enquirer story on Woods and New York cocktail hostess Rachel Uchitel had hit newsstands the day before, but it hadn’t garnered any attention. And…
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Corporal Punishment in Schools Still a Reality
Did you see the video of a high school basketball coach whipping a player that went viral recently and spawned a mass of outraged viewers? Murrah High School’s Marlon Dorsey admitted to “paddling” his students — even though corporal punishment has been banned in Mississippi’s Jackson Public Schools since 1991 — stating in a letter…
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A Case for Same-Sex Education
Here are the latest depressing reports on the plight of African Americans: Only 12 percent of our fourth-grade boys are proficient readers, compared with 38 percent of white fourth-grade boys. By eighth grade, reading proficiency falls to just 9 percent for black males, 33 percent for whites. Clearly, this is a crisis situation, with black…
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Spanking Isn't Always Wrong
My grandmother “Nana” was the dearest, sweetest, kindest and most loving woman I’ve ever known, a woman who raised her six children alone after being widowed at an early age. A fierce prayer warrior and strong woman of God, she was a Sunday-school superintendent and later a church mother. And whenever she felt it necessary,…
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Run, Sarah, Run! Please
Sarah Palin has indicated that she’s open to a presidential bid in 2012. Therefore, President Obama and every one of his supporters should pray nightly that she enters the race and wins the Republican nomination. Although there’s a “be careful what you wish for” risk in that scenario, I refuse to believe that most voters…
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Menthol Madness: Why Ban Blacks' Preferred Cigarette?
As with virtually every other African-American smoker I know, the only acceptable brands of cigarettes for me came in green-and-white packs. If you didn’t puff Salems — my cancer sticks of choice — you probably consumed Newports or Kools. I always found it odd that the top three brands shared the same color scheme. It…
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Morehouse's Dress Code: Anything Goes, But Not Everywhere
By Deron Snyder Morehouse College is among our most venerable HBCUs, alma mater to prominent African Americans such as Martin Luther King Jr., Spike Lee, Howard Thurman and Lerone Bennett Jr. The nation’s largest liberal arts college for men, “the House” has conferred bachelor’s degrees on more black men than any other college. There are…
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Caste Football Takes Up the Cause of White Athletes
By Deron Snyder Have you noticed that NFL linemen tend to be very large, while NBA centers are invariably very tall? And marathon runners are usually slender, while jockeys stand short? The only shock about those observations would be if someone failed to notice. You can’t watch football or basketball without picking up on the…
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No Women After 10 p.m.? What's a College Athlete to Do?
I didn’t realize the good fortune in being assigned to Carver Hall upon my arrival at Howard University in 1982. It was one of two all-male dormitories (the other was for lowly freshmen; I was a transfer), and I soon discovered that it was the only dorm with a 24-hour visitation policy. We enjoyed the…
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Black Quarterbacks Are Almost Ho-Hum
Here’s a good measuring stick for progress in the National Football League: The league not only welcomes African-American quarterbacks who are good to great but even makes room for the merely average, the truly suspect and one major reclamation project. Donovan McNabb, who guided the Philadelphia Eagles to five NFC Championship games and one Super…
