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Is Nas Hip-Hop's Randall Kennedy?
Browsing books at a Barnes & Noble in south San Francisco before dinner the other night, I saw a book called Sellout between the aisles, obviously positioned to be noticed. I saw the title of the hardcover, but it was the author’s name that drew my attention: Randall Kennedy, a Harvard Law professor who also…
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History Lived, Lessons Learned
Most of us are dead. But five of us are not. We are among the 20 African American women chosen by a group of educators and black history experts to be featured in a traveling exhibition called “Freedom’s Sisters.” And on a Friday night in mid-March at the Cincinnati Museum Center, the five of us…
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Give These Jersey Girls a Break
Bit by bit, I’m becoming a fan of the Rutgers University Scarlet Knights women’s basketball team and Don Imus has nothing to do with it. Blame the NCAA. Every year when they pick their field of 64 for the women’s basketball championship, the selection committee figures out a way to slight Rutgers. The Scarlet Knights…
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Why I Don't Like StuffWhitePeopleLike
By now you’ve likely been forwarded the link three, maybe four times. The nation may be divided by the war in Iraq, the Democratic Party may be lumbering towards a Denver apocalypse, mortgage-meltdown tent cities may be springing up while lenders collapse, but, look on the bright side: At least everyone loves Stuff White People…
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New Orleans — Food. Art. Culture.
Mike Molina, one of my buddies from Xavier, composed this poem to open up my “Mardi Gras (Phat Tuesday)” menu in Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen. Hurricane Katrina devastated the city less than six months later. Down in New Orleans Saffron skies chase down the sun Another sultry day is done Heat seasoned…
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Rev. Wright and the Easter Bunny
Last June, on assignment covering religion for the Washington Post, I found myself at the National Press Club, where a group of religious leaders were meeting to craft a social justice agenda for the 2008 elections. Among those at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Legislative Conference was a minister named Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a man with…
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That's Why I'm a Linebacker
I hate her. I’ve never seen her before, and don’t know her, but I don’t need to. I see what she looks like. I see what she’s wearing. I see who she’s with. That tells me everything I need to know. She can’t be trusted—her kind never can—and all she wants is to push her…
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My Teletype Transformation
Over the last week, I have been seething about how the media has used de-contextualized clips from Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons to hijack the public perception of Sen. Barack Obama’s historic run for the presidency. I was therefore eagerly, if anxiously, awaiting Obama’s formal response to this situation. Since I was en route to the…
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Addressing and Undressing the Race Problem
As a journalist, I do not publicly endorse candidates. So, as the black South Africans who had never been allowed to vote in their lives said when the finally could in 1994: My vote is my secret. But as I listened to all the commentary before, and after Sen. Barack Obama’s speech on race, among…
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I'm Black and for Hillary.Get Over it.
I am a Hillary Clinton supporter. There, I said it. And I’m tired of the dirty looks I get when I out myself. Why is it so surprising that someone like me – a black, educated, progressive chick – would put my support behind Hillary Clinton? Oh, I know. I’m black, so, of course, I…