culture

-BOOK EXCERPT Passing for Black By Linda Villarosa Copyright © 2008. Dafina Books, Kensington Publishing Corp. In this excerpt from Passing for Black, a new novel by our columnist Linda Villarosa, magazine editor Angela Wright has broken up with her fiancé, Keith. With no place to live, Angela is staying with her best friend, Mae.…

Traveling the country while making a film, I’ve been struck by the fact that the vast majority of white Americans do not consider themselves “racist.” In the North, we especially presume ourselves innocent. I certainly did. In 1995, when I was 28, and enrolled in seminary in Berkeley, Calif., I received a small booklet from…

So, you’ve heard about the celebration called Juneteenth. You may have bought a T-shirt at some point to signal your historical street cred. You may even have attended a Juneteenth picnic or paused to recognize it in some way. But, admit it, you don’t really know all that much about the day. And you may…

When I was a kid, my brother and I could look forward to waking up early, putting on a Juneteenth T-shirt and heading to my grandma’s house. She lived in Hamilton Park, a black neighborhood in north Dallas, and every year on the Saturday closest to Juneteenth, churches, community clubs and local businesses paraded down…

I am John Hamilton McWhorter, the fifth. The first John Hamilton McWhorter was a slave. This Thursday is Juneteenth, when I might be inclined to celebrate the emancipation of John Hamilton McWhorter, the first. Or not. Truth to tell, I have never quite gotten the hang of Juneteenth. I suppose I should. What could be…

The other day I decided to update my resume. First, I changed my title from journalist to content producer. Next, I went through and carefully deleted some entries then updated others. That December 1988 Providence Journal Bulletin Sunday Magazine cover story on heroin addicts in Gloucester, Mass.? Buh-bye. That 1988 summer internship on the features…

Kyle had just purchased a fresh pearl white Lexus coupe for his birthday. He said he’d rock it for a year or two, then trade it in. “Oh, it’s a lease,” I assumed.”No,” Kyle replied.”Two years…you’re not going to have it paid off by then, will you?””I’ll probably never pay off a car. If I’ve…

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…