culture

The news, this weekend, that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, after a prolonged search, has finally selected a new president brought to mind an old philosophical conundrum: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does anyone give a hoot? The sad fact is…

Last year, when I gave birth to my daughter and then experienced a range of complications that rivaled a plot line from the television show “House,” I was shocked that such a thing was possible. Upon my release from the hospital, my doctor came to me and said, “Half a million women die every year…

Last year I came across a New York Times story about increasing levels of infant mortality among African Americans. It stated that deaths of children in the first year of life, on the decline in previous years, were rising steadily. A few months later, another New York Times article discussed the declining rate of infant…

I am part of the generation — the post civil-rights generation, post-black power generation — that turned Malcolm X into a T-shirt and cap. He was our symbol of racial discontent and political angst. Though we did not live through the brutal repression of Jim Crow, we knew for ourselves, in our own way, the…

Except when Shaquille O’Neal is involved, good things happen in threes when it comes to NBA title runs. In the ’90s, the Chicago Bulls won six titles with a combination of Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and a stellar rebounding forward (Horace Grant from ’91-’93 and Dennis Rodman from ’96 -’98). In the last five years,…

I have been gaming longer than most gamers have been alive. In the early 1970s, I was one of a handful of electronic technicians at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center who used what was allegedly the most powerful computer complex outside of the military and intelligence communities to play geeky Star Trek strategy games during…

My introduction to portrait artist Kehinde Wiley was happenstance—a tag-along-type adventure with a photographer friend to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. Upon entering the gallery, I was greeted by space: a labyrinth of hollowed rooms demanding silence on behalf of the stark white walls. Amid this absence, Wiley drew me in with bright colors…

Recipe Card

Cacao-Café No Lait Pudding Yield: 4 Servings Soundtrack: “Brown Paper People” by Lila Downs from Una Sangre – One Blood Growing up, I used to love chocolate pudding. Since Bill Cosby convinced my mom that dangling a pudding pop in front of me would be an incentive to eat all my vegetables, I would even…

In Ishmael Reed’s 1972 novel Mumbo Jumbo, a dangerous epidemic, “Jes Grew” threatens 1920s America. For the uninfected, the virus’ symptoms are troubling and sudden, centering on an obsession with the dances, lingo and clandestine locations associated with ragtime and jazz. Jes Grew infections start in the country’s colored precincts, but the virus soon shows…