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Why Zora Neale Hurston Was a Conservative
This week we will hear a certain amount about how the newly unearthed short stories by Zora Neale Hurston reveal her interest in urban black culture, often obscured because of her rural focus in books like Their Eyes Were Watching God. Seeing Hurston rounded out for us is always welcome because she was complicated indeed.…
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Speaking Swahili for Kwanzaa?
“Jambo” may mean hello in Swahili, but a slave brought to the United States would not have recognized that greeting. There may not have been a single Swahili-speaking African brought to these shores amid the slave trade. If there were any, it was very few. I get to thinking about this during the holidays as…
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'The Scottsboro Boys': A Post-Mortem
If the new idea is that the producers of the now closed Broadway musical The Scottsboro Boys have launched an online campaign to revive the show just in time for Tonys season, then I must admit something. It’s something I cannot imagine I’m alone in, or at least I hope I’m not. I don’t think…
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The Myth of the Food Desert
Signing into law the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (pdf) will naturally not go down in history for President Barack Obama the way the latest tax compromise has. It’s not that hot kind of news — although it will likely have more effect on children’s daily lives than modest tax cuts. This new bill requires food…
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Letter to a Young Conservative: Why They Call Us Uncle Toms
Ron Christie’s new book on black poindexters getting called out for “acting white” is welcome in many ways. What a year, for one, when we get two books putting paid to the myth that people calling attention to the “acting white” charge are just fantasizing. Not to mention that it’s always good to see smart…
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Black Folks Need to Do Something
“Speed on before you get peed on.” I found myself thinking about that old lyric from Gang Starr’s “Tha Squeeze” when I read D. Omavi Harshaw’s bit about black America being “urinated on.” But I consider the part about the speed to be more important than the part about getting peed on. Namely, there is…
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So What If It's a Minstrel Show?
I just caught The Scottsboro Boys on Broadway. This is the musical that frames its story in an ironic minstrel format and was recently protested by New York City’s Freedom Party. The protesters, who complained that the play reduced the tragic case of nine black young men who were wrongly convicted of raping two white…
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We Know How to Teach Black Kids
Last week the media dutifully reported the typically depressing news about black boys’ scholarly chops from the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) survey. More than three times as many white fourth-grade boys as black ones read proficiently or better. By eighth grade, white boys are doing almost four times as well as black ones…
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Back in the Day, They Didn't Seek Closure
The main message from The Grace of Silence, the new memoir from Michele Norris of NPR, is that all of us can be black historians — and that we need to hop to it with all deliberate speed. The takeaway points in the book are memorable in themselves — but even more interesting in where…
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Juan Williams' Taboo-Breaking Mishap
It’s as if Juan Williams were a man in a small rain forest tribe and he called out a taboo name for a spirit. Or a lion. Or said the name of someone deceased. In human societies, some words will be considered magical — and not just in the societies we think of as primal.…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
