culture

It is supremely ironic that Barack Obama, the candidate who seeks to bury race as an issue in this campaign season, owes his overwhelming support among blacks to the continued power of black nationalism. For a century and a half, black nationalism has provided the main ideological challenge to the liberal, social democratic sensibilities that…

Little Lawrence King was queer. Not just in some identity politics way, but literally. Despite the innocence of his round, brown cheeks and puppy dog eyes, the kid was a threatening oddity at his Ventura County junior high school. Either because he was brave or naïve, or because he just couldn’t help himself, Lawrence reveled…

How’s this for an example of erasure? I was chatting on the phone with an editor at a media outlet which regularly features my writings. Having worked together for years, he and I have managed to move past professional diplomacies and platitudes to fashion something of a friendship. Because of the nature of our relationship,…

Well, no one can call the NBA the No Balls Association anymore. For years, NBA teams have been among the most risk averse in all of sports. Few players of any significance changed teams during the offseason, and the trade deadline usually meant a big swirl of rumors followed by a few peripheral players moving…

I still remember the sore elbows I got snuggled up to our fuzzy 19-inch to watch three nights of Alex Haley’s “Queen.” That was 15 years ago. On Monday, Feb. 25, a new generation of 12-year-olds will suffer their boney joints watching ABC’s “world premiere movie event” — Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun.”…

Here’s what I’m rooting for after the Congressional hearings into whether Roger Clemens or Brian McNamee lied to the Mitchell Committee. I hope Congress figures out a better way to spend its time and my tax dollars. I don’t need Sen. Arlen Specter convening a committee into why New England Patriots coach illegally taped opponent’s…

I was on a train in New York City when I received a frantic call from a writer at the Northern Star, the school newspaper at Northern Illinois University. The reporter told me there was a shooting at my school and that he was standing next to a girl covered in blood. My worst fear…

This weekend, when the NBA All Stars play in New Orleans, expect lots of slam dunks and other flamboyant plays that have become typical of black basketball. It’s not an ugly stereotype; it’s history. Pre-NBA, most black basketball teams played in ballrooms and were part of an evening of entertainment that often included a big…

At Sunday’s Grammy Awards ceremony, Alicia Keys graciously thanked Prince for handing her the prize for best female R&B vocal performance for her smash “No One.” But she has so much more to thank him for. T.S. Eliot once wrote that, “bad poets imitate; good poets steal.” And Keys’ latest effort “As I Am” leaves…

Alana and Craig Wilson live in a predominately white, middle-class subdivision in Virginia’s Fairfax County, just outside of Washington, D.C. Across the Potomac River, Terry and Rodney Jefferson reside in majority-black Prince George’s County, Maryland. The Wilsons and Jeffersons are black and middle-class. Both families, deeply concerned about the world their children will inherit, do…