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What $300 Can Do
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…
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Myanmar: Why We Have to Talk to the Bad Guys
Once again, a grave humanitarian crisis draws attention to the virtues of calibrated, but constructive international diplomatic engagement, even with the most unsavory of characters. Eighteen days ago, Cyclone Nargis ravaged southwestern Myanmar, affecting nearly 2.5 million people. Myanmar’s isolationist ruling junta has responded abysmally to the crisis, rejecting assistance from foreign aid workers and…
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Who's Caring for Our Babies?
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…
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Happy Birthday, Malcolm
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…
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The Fall of the Mighty Celtics
Except when Shaquille O’Neal is involved, good things happen in threes when it comes to NBA title runs. In the ’90s, the Chicago Bulls won six titles with a combination of Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and a stellar rebounding forward (Horace Grant from ’91-’93 and Dennis Rodman from ’96 -’98). In the last five years,…
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Sexy, Yes. Art? No.
I have been gaming longer than most gamers have been alive. In the early 1970s, I was one of a handful of electronic technicians at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center who used what was allegedly the most powerful computer complex outside of the military and intelligence communities to play geeky Star Trek strategy games during…
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Where Swagger Meets Stoicism
My introduction to portrait artist Kehinde Wiley was happenstance—a tag-along-type adventure with a photographer friend to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. Upon entering the gallery, I was greeted by space: a labyrinth of hollowed rooms demanding silence on behalf of the stark white walls. Amid this absence, Wiley drew me in with bright colors…
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A Flag Pin? Come on!
B, you’re kidding me, right? The flag pin? Come on. I’ve noticed you’re wearing it again—a lot. I also noticed you’ve been talking about patriotism—a lot. Too much, in fact Now, I have no beef with the flag or with patriotism, but I do when they are used as political weapons by people who think…
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Cacao-Café No Lait Pudding
Cacao-Café No Lait Pudding Yield: 4 Servings Soundtrack: “Brown Paper People” by Lila Downs from Una Sangre – One Blood Growing up, I used to love chocolate pudding. Since Bill Cosby convinced my mom that dangling a pudding pop in front of me would be an incentive to eat all my vegetables, I would even…