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The Words I Manifest: Is Conscious Rap Different? And you will find that this perspective is best –-check it out/ These are the words that I manifest. Gang Starr, “Manifest,” No More Mr. Nice Guy A typical take on rap is that whatever Paul Wall and Busta Rhymes are pulling, there is a whole body…

My own interest in the study of black food culture field began innocently enough as a child at the tables of my mother and grandmother where I savored hot water bread, oxtails and chess pie all the while pondering the logic of pig feet, stewed okra and banana pudding. My interest in the Diaspora grew…

This article and poem was written in the come-up to the 2008 presidential election. The poem, titled “The Obama Hour” was written by Thomas Sayers-Ellis and is reprinted below. Pundits say Obama has a “problem” with white voters. These “hard-working” white folks, in contrast to the lazy, resource-draining, criminally prone black folk, just won’t vote…

Things are pretty calm in India. Its recent election of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh means that the world’s largest democracy will once again be led by a seasoned economist. And it all happened peacefully, fairly and relatively without incident. By contrast, in Pakistan, the army is fighting to recapture territory from the Taliban and shore…

The news, this weekend, that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, after a prolonged search, has finally selected a new president brought to mind an old philosophical conundrum: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does anyone give a hoot? The sad fact is…

It’s March of 1850 when James McBride’s new novel, “Song Yet Sung,” opens. That’s when Liz Spocott has the dream that makes her decide she’d rather be a 19th century slave than a 21st century black American. “She dreamed of Negroes driving horseless carriages on shiny rubber wheels with music booming throughout, and fat black…

Last year, when I gave birth to my daughter and then experienced a range of complications that rivaled a plot line from the television show “House,” I was shocked that such a thing was possible. Upon my release from the hospital, my doctor came to me and said, “Half a million women die every year…

I am part of the generation — the post civil-rights generation, post-black power generation — that turned Malcolm X into a T-shirt and cap. He was our symbol of racial discontent and political angst. Though we did not live through the brutal repression of Jim Crow, we knew for ourselves, in our own way, the…

Last year I came across a New York Times story about increasing levels of infant mortality among African Americans. It stated that deaths of children in the first year of life, on the decline in previous years, were rising steadily. A few months later, another New York Times article discussed the declining rate of infant…