culture

Change is in the air, and I’m not talking about presidential politics. While the rest of the country obsesses over delegate math, black America would do well to pay closer attention to another vote count—how senators and members of Congress are lining up on the most serious effort to date to fix our unfair and…

LeBron James is the best player in the NBA this year and his performance towers over almost every other player by such a margin that there shouldn’t be a debate about Most Valuable Player; there should just be a coronation for the player sometimes referred to as King James. Yet there isn’t. Players like Kobe…

And when he get on he leave your ass for a white girl. —Kanye West I’ve spent the day hugged up with Vogue — staring into its beset April cover featuring athlete LeBron James and android Giselle Bundchen, and trying hard not to be numb. I’m trying to brush off the fact that the first…

In much the same way that February is an important, border-crossing season for many black media workers (it’s BEM, or Black Employment Month), the weekend that a Tyler Perry movie opens has quickly become a special, border-crossing time for many white film writers. The flicks written, directed, produced and acted in by Perry tend not…

I accept that Tyler Perry is a pop culture phenomenon. His new film, Meet the Browns, took in more than $20 million its opening weekend and his TV sitcom, House of Payne, won three NAACP image awards. But I find myself wondering how thoughtful folks are supposed to respond to the retrograde spirituality and formulaic…

It was Good Friday, when barbershops are notoriously busy, and there I waswaiting alongside grandfathers and school-age boys.My last visit to a barber had been in 1995, and it showed; locks flowing well past my shoulders.The decision to cut them was a long time coming. But every time I thought about it, I remembered how…

A strange and sad thing happened to me on my job search this year. I missed out on an opportunity not because of my skills, but because of my hair. I was looking for a little extra money for college this past February, so I applied for a job at my old place of employment,…

Browsing books at a Barnes & Noble in south San Francisco before dinner the other night, I saw a book called Sellout between the aisles, obviously positioned to be noticed. I saw the title of the hardcover, but it was the author’s name that drew my attention: Randall Kennedy, a Harvard Law professor who also…

After a flurry of jabs, feints, and ripostes last year—all signifying nothing—I had hoped the Nigger Wars had finally died down. In the words of The Abstract, it all goes in cycles and whenever the intellect of the black talking class is taxed, they inevitably point to some irrelevant cultural phenomenon as the source of…

Bit by bit, I’m becoming a fan of the Rutgers University Scarlet Knights women’s basketball team and Don Imus has nothing to do with it. Blame the NCAA. Every year when they pick their field of 64 for the women’s basketball championship, the selection committee figures out a way to slight Rutgers. The Scarlet Knights…