culture

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…

The latest entry in the celebrity-driven, black family, reality TV phenomenon is Deion & Pilar: Prime Time Love, which debuted last week, oddly enough, on Oxygen, a channel better-known for Bad Girls Club. For those who don’t follow professional sports the celebrity in this series is Deion Sanders, who was a bona fide superstar in…

It’s not surprising that many African Americans give Earth Day a pass. When you live poorer and die younger in the land of plenty, it can be hard to get excited about protecting the planet at large. The oppression of black people covers centuries of troubled terrain from forced agricultural labor, to contemporary land loss,…

A lot of things recently turned 50. You might recall them. Madonna – yawn. The Dodgers – thank God they haven’t abandoned Los Angeles like another professional team, which shall remain nameless. The Grammy Awards – the crystal ball simply didn’t see rap and hip-hop coming and staying. Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat…