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All across Harlem USA, it’s known as the ‘Memorial Day Shootout.’ And no one wants to remember it. As families, friends and acquaintances celebrated the season’s most picturesque evening late that Monday, a scene erupted on the borders of Marcus Garvey Park that could have come right out of a frightening war movie. And when…

For much of her musical career and indeed her life, Lalah Hathaway’s legendary last name likely mattered most to the people who encountered her. There was a novelty to Hathaway’s debut recording in 1990­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­—the daughter of a legendary soul singer makes good—though 18 years and four recordings later—Hathaway is a fully-grown woman who can stand…

There’s a conservative joke poking fun at liberal media that predicts coverage of an impending apocalypse would have the headline “World to End: Poor and Minorities Hardest Hit.” Despite his tenure as a Republican congressman, it seems J.C. Watts never heard that joke. Then again, maybe he did and just didn’t understand why it’s funny.…

There isn’t much sexual salaciousness in Sudhir Venkatesh’s ethnographic treatment of gang culture on Chicago’s South Side. He was a relatively naïve graduate student at the University of Chicago when he first started studying crack-dealing gangs in one of the country’s most notorious housing projects. Venkatesh embarked on a sociological journey that would educate him…

The box office has given its ecstatic verdict on the film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. ($482 million in gross ticket sales and counting.) But one little discussed metric that some people have been using to judge Skull (or, at least, that I have) is: How offensive was it compared to…

I know she exists. I know she lives uptown like Carrie and has a life insurance policy’s worth of Manolo’s in her closet. I know she vacations in the Hamptons or maybe Sag Harbor. And I know she has brown-skinned friends who live the same way. This weekend I went to see Michael Patrick King’s…