culture

I first saw pro basketball at the end of the Bill Russell era. Every year it seemed that some team, usually the Knicks, Lakers or 76ers, were better over the course of the regular season; but the Celtics would pull it all together and have just enough mettle and savvy to eek by everyone else…

There is nothing particularly “black” about The Abstinence Teacher. Tom Perrotta’s new novel does not have any significant black characters. It is set in the kind of upper-middle-class suburban environment where the minorities are Indians or Persians rather than African Americans. And while a church plays a major role in the story, it’s a non-denominational,…

Early last year I was called for jury duty. I headed to the court building in downtown Atlanta, semi-grateful for the reprieve from admin meetings and hoping to get some grading done — until I wandered into the wrong courtroom and was stunned by what I saw. The room was completely filled with black males,…

If you want to meet a real 40-year-old virgin I’m available for interviews. OK, technically speaking, since I have actually had sex, I’m not a virgin. But it’s been 10, long years! Yes, the equivalent of a decade; I didn’t stutter. So, I think my drought makes me eligible for reinstatement into Club Virgin. And…

Ida B. Wells, at the turn of the 20th century, called it a “threadbare lie.” She was talking about how lynch mobs masquerading as law enforcement justified their actions by claiming black men were raping white women. But Wells was on to a larger delusion, one that not only inspired sexual hysteria 100 years ago,…

The recent spate of rap stars making criminal justice news will come as a surprise to no one, especially those of you who equate hip-hop culture with prison culture. Nor will it surprise those of us who have accepted the fact that, in the black public sphere, record sales (or any sales for that matter)…

I am sick to my stomach, and I really do not know what to say. My cell and office phones have been blowing up, and people have been emailing me nonstop because Detectives Michael Oliver, Gescard Isnora, and Marc Cooper, the three New York City police officers accused of shooting 50 times and murdering Sean…

The NFL draft, which will dominate ESPN and ESPN2 this weekend, is one of the biggest lies in all of American sport. But it’s too much fun not to follow the results. The big lie is that the draft is the first step toward bad teams getting better. The reality is much more complex than…

With protests raging in the streets of Tibet and world-class athletes pulling out of the games (from fear of Beijing’s dangerous air pollution), I know there are many controversial topics that the International Olympic Committee needs to confront as it prepares for the summer games in Beijing. However, since that worldwide spectacle is just around…

They’re working. The rules are working as designed (see my earlier piece, No Time for Smoke-Filled Rooms), to guarantee that in a deeply divided, complicated and dangerous primary season the party elders will have the last say in choosing the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. But the people who designed, and seem so eager to…