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Farewell, Odetta
During my “real education” years, you know, post-undergrad and confused, there were five major players in the shaping of my consciousness: Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Henry Dumas, Toni Morrison and Odetta. I would sit in my living room in San Francisco, uncombed, Thrift Store gear and read excerpts of Angela Davis, Etheridge Knight with Odetta evoking…
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Meet The Browns – America's Out of Touch Family
A friend called me over the weekend to wish me a happy birthday and to tell me another friend of ours was cast in Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns. At first, I was silent. And I know I have a history of Perry-bashing and advocating for what I believe to be quality TV for black…
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Viola Davis: A Golden Globe Favorite
Several years ago when I was still boiling an egg and making it last a week, I was apartment-mates with THE Viola Davis. It wasn’t a romantic relation, so no need to call the Tabloids, but if you do, just get the name right. There were actually four of us in the apartment in Harlem…
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A Mattel Baby Doll with a Muslim Agenda
I don’t know if it’s the fighting in Gaza, or the possibility of Islamic children terrorizing airliners, or maybe it’s just a general mistrust of anything that looks, speaks or burps like a Middle Easterner, but now baby dolls are being pulled from store shelves for fear of Islamic takeover. Over the holiday season church…
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Beyonce Sings at the Lincoln Memorial – Say What?
So the Presidential Inaugural Committee has unveiled the Inaugural talent line up and guess who’s shaking her shimmy and belting out a few under Mister Emancipator himself… Beyonce. Now don’t get me wrong, I think Beyonce is talented. She can sing and dance in a style that can only originate in the basement of a…
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Interracial Anxiety – Do You Have It?
Today is officially Martin Luther King’s birthday. Barack Obama will be officially named president of the United States of America in five days. Martin hoped that one day black and white children could walk hand in hand under the same flag; Obama believes Americans share far more similiarities with each other than they’re willing to…
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American History: What do we throw away, What do we keep?
Last night I attended an interesting multi-media piece on “redevelopment and securing history” at the Public Theater in NYC. It was called Architecting. Stay with me. The play centers around a young white architect who’s been hired to redevelop a neighborhood in post-Katrina New Orleans. Still with me? The architect is kidnapped by a group…
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Has King's Dream Come to Fruition?
The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation conducted a survey last week about race relations. They phoned 798 whites and 332 blacks and asked if King’s “I Have a Dream” vision has been fulfilled. Meaning: do we, as multi-varied Americans, believe race is no longer an issue in Obama’s America on the eve of the Grand Inauguration? And…
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Inauguration Madness – The Arrival
I made it! After a long and germ-crazy bus ride from Chinatown in New York City to the heart of D.C.’s Chinatown I finally stepped into the beautiful madness. The bus ride was pretty somber. I guess 3am travel will silence even “Obama-giddy-I-took-off-work-and-I-dare-anybody-to-say-anything-I’m-about-to-celebrate-our-first-black-prez” troopers. But once all 57 passengers stepped onto H and 5th Streets…
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Inauguration Madness – It's All Over
The long and frigid journey to witness President Barack Obama take the Oath and give his inauguration speech as this country’s 44th President was worth every chilling minute. Even if I did have to watch from a Jumbo-Tran on the Mall some million or more people away from him. Most of the official entrances to…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
