culture

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…

By now you’ve likely been forwarded the link three, maybe four times. The nation may be divided by the war in Iraq, the Democratic Party may be lumbering towards a Denver apocalypse, mortgage-meltdown tent cities may be springing up while lenders collapse, but, look on the bright side: At least everyone loves Stuff White People…

Most of us are dead. But five of us are not. We are among the 20 African American women chosen by a group of educators and black history experts to be featured in a traveling exhibition called “Freedom’s Sisters.” And on a Friday night in mid-March at the Cincinnati Museum Center, the five of us…

I hate her. I’ve never seen her before, and don’t know her, but I don’t need to. I see what she looks like. I see what she’s wearing. I see who she’s with. That tells me everything I need to know. She can’t be trusted—her kind never can—and all she wants is to push her…

Mike Molina, one of my buddies from Xavier, composed this poem to open up my “Mardi Gras (Phat Tuesday)” menu in Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen. Hurricane Katrina devastated the city less than six months later. Down in New Orleans Saffron skies chase down the sun Another sultry day is done Heat seasoned…