Uncategorized
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Growing Into My Big-Girl Clothes
It took almost one year, hundreds of gallons in gas and several mall madness Saturdays, but I finally got it. “It” wasn’t just another low-cut shirt with a ring of elastic around the bust line. And it surely wasn’t another pair of too-tight jeans that required an inhale-exhale exercise to wiggle into. It was a…
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Speaking Ill of the Dead
Political scientists investigating why the Republican Party attracts so little support from black voters don’t need to look farther than the extraordinary fashion in which GOP leaders have reacted to the death of former North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms on the Fourth of July. The possibility that a black man might actually be elected president…
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The Gangs of L.A.
Los Angeles’ gang problem has many intricate and labyrinthine causes, all of which have been deconstructed and debated for literally decades. The gang culture in Los Angeles is a well-oiled and self-perpetuating institution with a remarkable capacity for self-renewal that probably best explains the durability of gangs in Los Angeles. The recent debate about whether…
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Postcard from New Orleans
There’s something uniquely New Orleans about being serenaded by an Obama-hat-wearing trumpet player while perched next to the Mississippi River, munching hot beignets buried beneath piles of powdered sugar. Add to that the presence of thousands of doozied up black folks from around the country celebrating the Fourth of July. There, you have the Essence…
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Sweat it Smart
Hot, hotter, hottest. Africa Hot. Like someone’s fired up the grill, and you’re what’s cookin’ hot. That’s how it feels when you’re exercising on a triple “H” day, when it’s hazy, hot and humid. Working out with the sun beating down on you isn’t just uncomfortable, but it can be dangerous, particularly if you’re not…
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Don't Go to Commercial
Hallelujah! Have you heard the good news? If not, let me be the first to tell you. BET has FINALLY gotten the ol’ Don Imus treatment. That’s right. Some major sponsors have pulled advertisements from BET, due to the gratuitous violence, profanity and obscenity on some of the cable network’s programs, according to a report…
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Death on a Hospital Floor
You’d think after Beatrice Vance of Illinois and Edith Isabel Rodriguez of California both died on the ER waiting room floor while hospital staff just looked on, that maybe hospitals would be on red alert to avoid this type of bad publicity—not to mention the loss of human life. But now there is the story…
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Page Burners
Whether it’s on the beach blanket or the porch swing—or, for those with little or no vacation time, the commuter train—summertime provides a kind of natural blank slate. Maybe it’s because all your favorite shows are in reruns and the summer movies leave you cold, but suddenly you feel you have time to embark upon…
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Ballin' Without a Budget
If you miss the days of irrational exuberance, that halcyon era of the late ’90s when otherwise sensible people spent thousands of dollars on stock in companies they knew nothing about except that their names contained the suffix “.com,” then follow the NBA for the next couple of weeks. The spending of some teams is…
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Black Men and Gender Privilege
I recently traveled abroad to the Dominican Republic with some of my closest male friends. Before I left, I read Don’t Blame it on Rio: The Real Deal Behind Why Men Go to Brazil for Sex by Jewel Woods and Karen Hunter. At the time I read it, I took some of the accounts in…