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The Beautiful 'Black List'
HBO’s newest documentary The Black List is a lot like the imagined coffee table book that inspired it—super-sized with lots of pictures meant to incite conversation. The film’s images rotate like a Who’s Who in Black America. Did you know that Slash from Guns N’ Roses was black? Or that the former president of Planned…
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TV One-Dimensional
On a recent broadcast of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” the host launched into his opening monologue with customary snark. But instead of riffing on a celebrity, he detoured and took on Johnathan Rodgers, the CEO and president of the black cable network TV One. Rodgers had recently announced that his channel planned to…
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Mama of Mystery
This isn’t the ordinary Five Questions for a Public Mama that I write periodically on my blog, Seeds. I don’t want to know how Lauryn disciplines her five kids, what it’s like being married to a Marley or where she buys her knit hats. I don’t want to know if she has a television in…
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An Analog Girl in a Digital World
The Roots opened up with their hip-hop jazz riffs and stirring interludes of saxophones and drums when a big-boned woman whispered in a throaty voice: So when the analog girl in a digital world gonna come out? The lights dimmed. A medley of Badu hits played, taking me back to all the places I lived…
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The Confessions of Lauryn Hill
It’s funny how money change a situation Miscommunication leads to complication My emancipation don’t fit your equation… Some wan’ play young Lauryn like she dumb —Lauryn Hill, “Lost Ones” —Scroll back a decade, and there was Lauryn Hill—top of the world, Ma!—clutching five Grammys and sending shoutouts to her babies, thanking them for not spilling…
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A Dying Breed
Ragan Henry, a little-known African-American pioneer in media ownership who quietly amassed a small empire of 60 television and radio stations between the early 1970s and 1990, died late last month in Philadelphia with as little fanfare as he had lived. He was 74. Henry’s death should be an item of conversation for anyone who…
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Remembering Stephanie
Journalists like me rarely admit to liking people in the news. But I have no qualms or shame in admitting that I shed huge, salty tears after hearing that Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the Democratic Ohio congresswoman, died Wednesday from a brain aneurysm. She was 58, and she was my friend. I came to know…
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We Down with GOP
As Rick Warren’s Saddleback presidential faith forum approached last Saturday, I ran to the store before it closed to pick up a few items. At the register, the conversation quickly turned from my purchases to politics. The problem with politics, the white male cashier said with more than a hint of cynical frustration, was politicians,…
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How I Became an Obama Delegate
My last foray into politics was in 5th grade when I lost what I’m sure was a rigged election for class president. I’ve been writing about black political issues since I was a college freshman. But aside from voting or organizing the occasional protest, I’ve never been involved in electoral politics. That was until March,…
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Stop Punking Out, Obama!
“For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him.…