Uncategorized
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The Audacity of Taupe
“Yo, I start to flinch as I try not to say it;But my lips is like the ooh-wop as I start to spray it…” – Q-Tip If a white woman can have a crush on Obama, then I hope a biracial man can have a crush on The View’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck, because she’s doing a…
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Black Like Mommy, White Like Me
Simone snuggled up beside me and pointed to my face. “Mommy,” she said, “is a black girl.” How observant, I thought, for a 3-year-old to make such a distinction. “Yes,” I said, “Mommy is a black girl.” “Simone,” she continued, “is a white girl.” In all the time I had dreamed about being a mother…
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Keeping Him Healthy
Health news is almost always depressing when it comes to people of color, especially our black men. Our husbands, fathers, brothers, sons and friends are at least 50 percent more likely to die of a heart attack, stroke, complications from diabetes and cancer than their white counterparts. These numbers represent real men, and it just…
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Black Skin, Blue Passport: Is It Me?
As is often the case in the United States, sometimes I have trouble telling when people are racist or just plain rude. When I checked into my Mexico City bed and breakfast—which had received rave reviews on from Trip Advisor—I sensed a disconnect between the pleasant tone the owner adopted over e-mail (he even complimented…
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Twenty-Five Minutes of Hell
Too tired, too old, too fat, too busy. If these are the excuses you use to bail on your workout then eventually you’ll be too sick and too dead for it to even matter. The most common reason people give for not exercising is the time factor and, yes, I understand that you are over-scheduled…
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Over the Rainbow: Angie and Jo
Okay, so there’s Maddox from Cambodia, Pax from Vietnam, Zahara from Ethiopia, Shiloh from Namibia (well, born there, anyway), and now, new additions, twins Vivienne and Knox, born in France. In less time than it takes to get an undergraduate degree, Angelina Jolie, with some help from partner Brad Pitt, has earned a way more…
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Obama in Berlin
When I moved to Berlin eight years ago—in the wake of a rash of neo-Nazi attacks against foreigners of color—I wondered if people stared at me because they didn’t want me in their country. I suspected men who came on too fast were merely toying with a fetish. I thought the cold, standoffish manner from…
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Burden of Proof
While on a seven-country tour this week, dignified and presidential images of Barack Obama have replaced last week’s cartoon image of him as a fist-bumping, flag-burning terrorist. This isn’t the first time that questions of Obama’s patriotism and loyalty have been raised, then quieted, by an inspiring speech or image. Throughout this presidential election, Obama…
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When Thugs Cry
It is time to pull this car over and give you gangsta rappers something to cry about. Cry about genocide in Darfur. Cry about the lack of support for the people in Burma. Cry about the displaced New Orleans folks that got gutted and uprooted like seaweed. Cry about poverty, teen-pregnancy rates and joblessness. But,…
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Black in America, Now What?
In Black in America, CNN’s four-hour-long series premiering this week, we learn some facts that may be news to viewers, including:— The prolific, loquacious Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson has a younger brother who is serving a life sentence for murder.— A fresh-faced, 18-year-old black single mother in the Bronx does not have the virus…