Uncategorized
-
Rape and Race: We Have to Talk About It
I witnessed something truly astonishing on Monday night: a public discussion of black women’s experiences of sexual violence at the hands of black men. It was an intergenerational group of black men and women, gay and straight, survivors and perpetrators, all grappling with the legacy of rape and race. The experience was unusual because black…
-
Sweet Sweetback's Salad: a recipe from the Eco-Soul Kitchen
Sweet Sweetback’s Salad with Roasted Beet Vinaigrette Yield: 4 Servings You bled my momma! You bled my poppa! (But you won’t bleed ME!) — as echoed over Earth Wind, and Fire’s music in the 1971 film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song Last weekend I was in Los Angeles filming an episode for “Mario’s Greenhouse,” a television…
-
Match Points
I went on Match dot com not to find someone but to rid myself of silly romantic illusions. It worked exquisitely. Remember last year when that film clip was making the rounds of the Internet, the one about a black man taking his white girlfriend to his ex-wife’s house and then sticking around to deliver…
-
The American Embrace of Ignorance, and Why Blacks Need to Let Go.
Americans have always had an uneasy relationship with learning and those who pursue it. We are a nation that has made free public education a birthright, but we pay teachers the lowest salaries of any group of college-educated professionals. In the last two presidential elections, we’ve chosen a man of less-than-mediocre intellect whose thinking is…
-
Thug Life on the Campaign Trail
Princeton historian Sean Wilentz has leveled an odd charge against Barack Obama. He accuses the Illinois senator’s campaign of trying to hijack the Democratic presidential nomination by arguing it has a stronger claim on the nomination because Obama has more pledged delegates than Sen. Hillary Clinton and larger percentage of the popular vote. Wilentz argues…
-
Things Still Fall Apart
It was out of a “sense of deprivation” that Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart. That’s what the renowned Nigerian novelist and “inventor of African literature,” told a captivated crowd in Princeton, N.J. who gathered recently to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the seminal novel. Five decades after its release, it is a fitting time…
-
Cheap Trick
Since February, I have stopped putting out. I pledged a vow of frugality, and I plan on protecting it until I get into the right relationship with my money. No mall runs, expensive dining, or manicure/pedicure combo deals. It’s my virtue. I think far too many of us are spending too easily, giving up the…
-
When Milk Does a Body Bad
Money’s tight. And as a recession looms, it’s getting tighter. So should you spend your hard-earned money — sometimes more than double the price —to buy hormone-free milk? More and more Americans are saying “yes.” Bowing to consumer pressure, last month Wal-Mart announced that its store brand milk will now come exclusively from cows free…
-
Baseball: 'The System' Says Watchout For Texas
My friend John is one of the smartest people I know. He has degrees from two elite schools and has held high-ranking positions in both the public and private sector. Yet, when we get together to talk about baseball, he counts on his fingers. His team is good this year because on the index finger,…
-
Dr. King's Challenge
What would Dr. King say to us today? We have a tendency to sanitize his memory, to remember the Dr. King who fought the evil of state-mandated segregation, the Dr. King who marched on Washington in 1963, the Dr. King with whom all Americans say they (now) agree. But there was another Dr. King –…