culture

I’ve boycotted Father’s Day for longer than I can remember. In content rebellion, I’d refuse to telephone my father and would avoid his call when he pined for my gratitude. I’d reject any urges to select and purchase hideous neckties or other unnecessary gifts. I’d dismiss images of sitting around a bountiful dinner table honoring…

All across Harlem USA, it’s known as the ‘Memorial Day Shootout.’ And no one wants to remember it. As families, friends and acquaintances celebrated the season’s most picturesque evening late that Monday, a scene erupted on the borders of Marcus Garvey Park that could have come right out of a frightening war movie. And when…

Just when I thought the unsavory litany of insults, absurdities and hypocrisies that defined the race for the Democratic presidential nomination could not possibly get any longer, the long goodbye of Hillary Clinton proved me wrong. The Grief Narrative that led up to the New York senator’s grin-and-bear-it endorsement of Barack Obama on Saturday just…

For much of her musical career and indeed her life, Lalah Hathaway’s legendary last name likely mattered most to the people who encountered her. There was a novelty to Hathaway’s debut recording in 1990­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­—the daughter of a legendary soul singer makes good—though 18 years and four recordings later—Hathaway is a fully-grown woman who can stand…

There isn’t much sexual salaciousness in Sudhir Venkatesh’s ethnographic treatment of gang culture on Chicago’s South Side. He was a relatively naïve graduate student at the University of Chicago when he first started studying crack-dealing gangs in one of the country’s most notorious housing projects. Venkatesh embarked on a sociological journey that would educate him…

There’s a conservative joke poking fun at liberal media that predicts coverage of an impending apocalypse would have the headline “World to End: Poor and Minorities Hardest Hit.” Despite his tenure as a Republican congressman, it seems J.C. Watts never heard that joke. Then again, maybe he did and just didn’t understand why it’s funny.…

The box office has given its ecstatic verdict on the film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. ($482 million in gross ticket sales and counting.) But one little discussed metric that some people have been using to judge Skull (or, at least, that I have) is: How offensive was it compared to…

A couple of weeks ago, I bumped into Roberto, a college classmate on the street. Since we were both class of ’82, this is a drop-everything moment: We live in the same Manhattan neighborhood, but our contact seems limited to annual chance encounters. After catching up, our dialogue turned to sports, and Roberto made a…

I know she exists. I know she lives uptown like Carrie and has a life insurance policy’s worth of Manolo’s in her closet. I know she vacations in the Hamptons or maybe Sag Harbor. And I know she has brown-skinned friends who live the same way. This weekend I went to see Michael Patrick King’s…

Joshua Packwood’s march across the stage as Morehouse College’s first white valedictorian left a trail of fiery online commentary from African Americans, filled with consternation, anger and fear. For some, white participation and success in the black world means the failure and even end of blackness. For me, Packwood’s successes are but a part of…