culture

R. Kelly has lost his mojo. He’s old, and he’s tired, and the sound and style he perfected are now flowing through the veins of more capable artists like The-Dream, Trey Songz and Usher. There’s nothing wrong with growing old, of course. Except when you think you’re still young.   With his first-ever mixtape, The Demo…

Among the things that have, until now, been universal truths in professional basketball: · Someone, every three years, will be compared to Michael Jordan. It will be a fallow comparison, and the poor fellow will soon be playing in Europe, if playing at all. · The Miami Heat, year in and year out, will have…

After the Celtics beat the Detroit Pistons in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals, the phone rang. I presumed it was an old friend from my childhood in Mattapan, Mass., one of my boys who, back in the 1980s, would typically ride me if the C’s lost a game and half-heartedly congratulate me on…

Single Father, Author, Screenwriter, Award-Winning Journalist, NPR Moderator, Lecturer and College Professor. Habitual Line-Stepper

Now that the weather is consistently warm throughout the country, we’ve entered into what the British would probably call high season for weddings. According to American Wedding Consultants, the nation’s oldest association of professional wedding planners, the months of May through October are big favorites for saying “I do.” So, if you’re getting lots of…

And so continues the conundrum of being a post-racial black candidate in a still-very-racial world. To speak the truth about anything involving race is to be accused instantly of dragging out that famous racial deck we’ve all been dealt that stands us in such good stead in America. The campaign of Barack Obama has had…

In 2007, Oprah Winfrey gave $50 million to establish the Oprah Winfrey Foundation and Oprah’s Angel Network; in 1987 Bill Cosby gave $20 million to Spelman College; in 2004 Buddy Fletcher pledged to give away $50 million to organizations to further the goal of Brown v. Board of Education. African Americans have a tradition of…

Dad was a revolutionary. A prolific artist and intellectual, a driving force in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, founder of the artists’ collective AfriCobra (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) and retired dean of the Howard University College of Fine Arts, Jeff R. Donaldson created works that are world-renowned, brilliant and timeless. But…

On my desk, in my office, is a picture of my mother and me. I might be 2 weeks old. She’s cradling me with one arm against her chest, her slender fingers smoothing down my baby hair. She’s got a close-cropped afro, and we’re in somebody’s kitchen—maybe ours, but probably my Grandmommy’s. There’s a bag…

The lunch was supposed to be about politics. I had just moved to town and sitting across from me was a 50-something former Cincinnati city councilman and preacher who was helping to run down the lay of the land. Earlier, when he showed me his church’s new recreation room, I lamented that I wished I…