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The Pain Beneath the Swagger
“I was never depressed. […] I just want to tell everybody I’m fine. I’m good. It’s a blessing to play the game that I love.” —Vince Young In case you didn’t know already, black boys don’t cry. Tears just don’t go with the brand. African-American males are encouraged to be fearless, cocky and impervious to external…
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"Young Elizabeth Hemings's World"
Adapted from THE HEMINGSES OF MONTICELLO by Annette Gordon-Reed. Copyright © 2008 by Annette Gordon-Reed. With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Elizabeth Hemings began life when America was still a colonial possession. She lived through the Revolution in the home of one of the men who helped make it and died…
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Mbeki Moved On
And now it’s breath-holding time for South Africa, as the nation comes to grips with the sudden, shock-and-awe removal of its president Thabo Mbeki by his own party. Mbeki’s credo for the continent was ‘African solutions for African problems.’ Even as he applied the doctrine next door in Zimbabwe, a South African solution to the Mbeki…
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MSG — Still Bad For You
For years, adding MSG to food was about as common, and acceptable, as adding a dash of salt. But as people became more health conscious and gained better access to nutritional information, they began to make the connection between their skull-splitting migraine and the previous night’s Chinese takeout. The discovery of MSG’s unpleasant side effects…
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Why Obama Can't Get Mad
I’m sick of folks yapping about how Barack Obama needs to do a war dance on John McCain’s head. Sure, McCain and his GOP allies are telling lies and appear to bear no cost for repeatedly doing so. And, yes, the Democrats’ response has been, to say the least, lame and tepid. I understand; it’s maddening to…
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Sally Hemings in Paris
Adapted from THE HEMINGSES OF MONTICELLO by Annette Gordon-Reed. Copyright © 2008 by Annette Gordon-Reed. With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. The home that Sally Hemings moved to was just inside the city limits of Paris. The Hôtel de Langeac was right next to the Grille de Chaillot, one of the…
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Sally Hemings and Me
I first became interested in President Thomas Jefferson and his famous mountaintop home, Monticello, in third grade, when I read a series of biographies about prominent Americans. The series was just about what one would expect for texts pitched to elementary-school children: cheery and uncomplicated versions of great American lives designed to plant positive feelings…
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Making Paper
For most of its 200-year history, the art of paper-doll making has not been flattering to black folks. Prior to the mid-1950s, white illustrators and publishers generally drew the rare black paper doll in menial or supporting roles, often as an appendage to a white family. Mimicking popular culture, images of picaninnies, sambos, mammies, butlers…
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All Together NOW!
The National Organization for Women’s recent endorsement of Barack Obama ordinarily would not be such a big deal. Even though the organization endorsed Hillary Clinton in the primaries, it makes sense that the group would channel its energy to the Democratic nominee. Still, with all the tension around gender and race that spilled over during…
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Maybe Lou Dobbs is Right
It’s easy to ignore the ho-hum routines in a city like Washington, D.C.—a town that hosts conferences and conventions of some sort every single day, four or five times a day, it seems. But a town-hall meeting at this week’s 30th Annual Conference and Exposition of the National Black MBA Association offered timely insight into…