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Bush’s Real Legacy in Africa
President Bush has traveled to the African continent on a trip billed as “an opportunity to demonstrate America’s commitment to the people of…Africa.” Yet Africans are likely to be as skeptical of Mr. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” as African Americans. Bush is frequently heralded as the president that has done more for Africa than any in…
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The Bush Family's Slaveholding Past
The image most people have of slavery involves a cotton plantation with a big white house, a black village where 300 people live in cabins and a cruel overseer in the wings. This was not the model followed by the ancestors of President George W. Bush when, 175 years ago, they enslaved about 30 people…
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Bush's Liberian Lovefest
President George W. Bush is off on a visit to Africa. He’ll be zipping through Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia in less than a week. Some may wonder why, after visiting Africa only once before during his long (interminable) presidency, in 2003, Bush has decided at this late date to return his attention, albeit…
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Is the NBA Losing Its Street Cred?
This weekend, when the NBA All Stars play in New Orleans, expect lots of slam dunks and other flamboyant plays that have become typical of black basketball. It’s not an ugly stereotype; it’s history. Pre-NBA, most black basketball teams played in ballrooms and were part of an evening of entertainment that often included a big…
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That Was My Geology Class
I was on a train in New York City when I received a frantic call from a writer at the Northern Star, the school newspaper at Northern Illinois University. The reporter told me there was a shooting at my school and that he was standing next to a girl covered in blood. My worst fear…
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Who Died and Made Tavis King?
Who put Tavis Smiley in charge? Over the past two months African Americans have emerged as equal partners in a multi-racial, intergenerational, bipartisan, national coalition led by the most exciting political candidate of the past four decades, who also happens to be the first viable African-American presidential possibility in our history. So why is Tavis…
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The Bourgie Blues
Alana and Craig Wilson live in a predominately white, middle-class subdivision in Virginia’s Fairfax County, just outside of Washington, D.C. Across the Potomac River, Terry and Rodney Jefferson reside in majority-black Prince George’s County, Maryland. The Wilsons and Jeffersons are black and middle-class. Both families, deeply concerned about the world their children will inherit, do…
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She'll Take That
At Sunday’s Grammy Awards ceremony, Alicia Keys graciously thanked Prince for handing her the prize for best female R&B vocal performance for her smash “No One.” But she has so much more to thank him for. T.S. Eliot once wrote that, “bad poets imitate; good poets steal.” And Keys’ latest effort “As I Am” leaves…
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Immersion Therapy
Not my idea, not really. Credit mostly belongs to a poet friend of mine. We were discussing some independent movie by an unknown black director he had just seen at a special screening at his local art house. It would be cool, said The Poet, to be able to see more movies like that, movies…