culture

The Express is a film based on the life of Syracuse University football star Ernie Davis, the first African American to win a Heisman Trophy. But for all of us who are tired of clichéd sports flicks, the film offers something that is not just surprising, but rare: a story about strong and meaningful relationships…

Last summer, the national news media announced the deaths of four gorillas killed in a national park in eastern Congo. A United Nations delegation was quickly dispatched to investigate. As a Congolese living in the United States and hungry for news back home, I was thankful for the coverage. But since my grandparents still live…

For countless black moviegoers, Love & Basketball remains a classic. Complete with relatable black leads and an emotional, yet realistic plotline, the film plays for your heart and wins. But this triumph isn’t without tremendous effort. The film, which debuted in 2000, was a labor of love for screenwriter and director Gina Prince-Bythewood, rife with…

On the surface, The Secret Life of Bees, appears to be another film about a group of all-forgiving, African-American women caregivers who come to the rescue of a white girl in distress. However, as directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love and Basketball), the film goes far beyond the typical Mammy fare. Each of the central black…

For the last few years, all you needed to know about the NBA West was that the San Antonio Spurs, the Dallas Mavericks and the Phoenix Suns were the best teams and that a slew of other good teams were stuck behind them trying very hard to move up. Then last year Change! came to…

‘Tis the season for HBCU homecomings. From now through November, thousands of college alumni from historically black institutions will descend on campuses across the South. Employers, please understand why the few African Americans at your workplace are taking Fridays off from now until November. Non-HBCU grads, please be patient with your black college friends who…

I hear it all the time. In coffee shops. On panels lamenting the decline in reading. In educational centers. On the street. While out with friends. There aren’t any good books published anymore. While there may be slight truths in this rather sweeping generalization, I think the problem lies more in the fact that great…

Thanks to Iyanla Vanzant, many black women spent the late 1990s talking about houses. Not physical ones, but houses as metaphors. In her book about love and relationships, In the Meantime (1998), Iyanla Vanzant began her trademark sister-girl explanation of romantic relationships like this: “We all start out in the basement of life. This is…

Sometime in the late ’90s—memory can’t pinpoint when—I was sitting around with a few pals discussing the state of African Americans in the executive suites of sports teams. Certainly progress was being made since Al Campanis’ racist remarks on Nightline, but it seemed that the sporting world was no different than the real world in…

Fifty years after recording her first hit, a rendering of George and Ira Gershwin’s “I Loves You, Porgy,” and five years after her death from complications of breast cancer, Nina Simone continues to fascinate. She left a benchmark that was, as sung in the opening verse of Funkadelic’s 1978 anthem, “One Nation Under a Groove”:…