culture
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Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Education Pick, Shouldn’t Be Anywhere Near Our Children
Betsy DeVos is a longtime billionaire philanthropist, a champion of allowing religion in schools and a charter school board member who was picked by President-elect Donald Trump as his nominee for secretary of education. She has never worked in a school or been in the field of education before, and while she has considerable money…
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The South Got Something to Say: Professor Discusses Her Revolutionary Class on Outkast
Regina N. Bradley, Ph.D., wears many hats: assistant professor of African-American literature at Armstrong State University in Savannah, Ga.; alumna Nasir Jones Hip-Hop Fellow at Harvard University; Red Clay Scholar; and my sister SpottieOttieDopaliscious angel. Bradley has created a following outside the classroom with her Outkasted Conversations, a critically acclaimed dialogue series dedicated to thinking…
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Author’s Most Refreshingly Honest Take on Why Trump Deserves Trust, Respect, Admiration
Author and political analyst David S. King is a genius. He wrote the book Why Trump Deserves Trust, Respect & Admiration. King’s publisher, Richard Sprake, called me to clue me in on this literary masterpiece, and I almost hung up on him after he said the title. And then, in his next breath, Sprake told…
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Esperanza Spalding on the Peace Ball, Trump and Life After Emily
“If a mountain has to erupt, it’s going to erupt,” so says musician Esperanza Spalding. These are not lyrics from her progressive 2016 single “Good Lava”; she is, however, speaking of unleashing the molten abandon of her inner self to give birth to her critically acclaimed 2016 album, Emily’s D+Evolution, as well as of America’s…
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Being Mary Jane Recap: The Big Bad Wolf
Last week’s season premiere of Being Mary Jane was titled “Getting Nekkid,” This week’s episode is “Getting Naked,” and as Mary Jane (Gabrielle Union) explained to Lee (Chiké Okonkwo), the difference is in your intentions and the ever-running theme of vulnerability. “Nekkid” implies that you are naked but “up to no good.” “Naked” is to…
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Watch: Remembering Muhammad Ali on His 75th Birthday
Today, on what would have been Muhammad Ali’s 75th birthday, and coming on the heels of what would have been Martin Luther King Jr.’s 88th, we are reminded of how we should follow their example of service to our communities. Ali once said, “The service you do for others is the rent you pay for…
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Martin Luther King III Recaps His ‘Constructive’ Meeting With Trump
Martin Luther King III made the interesting decision to meet with Donald Trump on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the national holiday celebrating the birth of his father. King said that Trump intends to ensure that all Americans are guaranteed the right to vote and that he plans to work with Trump to that end.…
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Martin Luther King Jr.: ‘My Dream Has Turned Into a Nightmare’
On May 8, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. granted an interview to veteran NBC News correspondent Sander Vanocur and made it clear that his famous dream had turned into a nightmare. The interview happened just three-and-a-half years after King’s powerful “Normalcy, Never Again” sermon—more commonly known as the “I Have a Dream” speech, thanks to…
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What to Say When ‘Wypipo’ Bring Up MLK
Whenever a black person diverges from the path of respectability and voices an opinion contrary to the mainstream narrative, the keepers of the status quo will quickly shout them down with the same, recognizable refrain. Sometimes it sounds so familiar, one might think the people who sit atop America’s totem pole must have trained one…
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Black Lives Matter Chicago and Martin Luther King Jr.
“This is a terrible thing. I’ve been in many demonstrations all across the South, but I can say that I have never seen—even in Mississippi and Alabama—mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as I’ve seen here in Chicago.” —Martin Luther King Jr. text On Nov. 5, 2016, Joshua Beal was in Chicago for his cousin’s…