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The Football Giants
It’s not a surprise, but this point needs to be stressed: The NFL is not big on continuity. Just look at the NFC. After 10 weeks of the season, last year the top teams were clear; Dallas, Green Bay, Tampa Bay and Seattle were the class of the conference. Each was a team with enough…
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Why Black Comics Must Get Barack
Fade back to 1983. Reaganomics has black America in a stranglehold, unemployment is running rampant, and my sisters and I have snuck into the basement after lights out to watch Eddie Murphy, clad in a skintight red leather outfit, tell dirty jokes. Eddie says he saw Jesse Jackson working out at the gym now that…
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Obama's Missing Fur Coat
We were supposed to see a fur coat in this election. It was supposed to come out at an inopportune moment, the way Frank Lucas’ (Denzel Washington) garish chinchilla did at the Ali-Frazier fight in American Gangster. It tipped everyone off that the customarily low-profile and buttoned-down Lucas was the guy they thought he was…
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No We Can't, White Folks
Black people aren’t the only ones worried about embarrassing themselves now that Obama is president-elect. Here are a few pointers for white people. 1. Don’t personally congratulate all your black friends. Black people are not a sports team, and Obama did not win the Super Bowl. 2. Don’t declare that you “never thought you’d see…
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Michelle Obama: First Lady of the United States
The first first lady to enter my consciousness was Rosalynn. I was 13 at the time. She was 50, the child of a farmer, the wife of a former governor, the mother of three. I could not relate to her, exactly—she was older than my mother and white and from a deeper kind of South…
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Your Vote. Our History.
READ MORE VOTER STORIES Myles and Nina Bell West Chester, Ohio Miles: Barack Obama is a beast. I like what he stands for. He wants to help people. The gas prices are high; he’s trying to lower them. He’s going to make sure that more people get insurance and that everybody will be safe and…
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In Our Lifetime
A new dawn of American leadership is at hand. President-elect Barack Obama We have all heard stories about those few magical transformative moments in African-American history, extraordinary ritual occasions through which the geographically and socially diverse black community—a nation within a nation, really—molds itself into one united body, determined to achieve one great social purpose…
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Harlem: Red, White and New
It isn’t often that you get to choose where to watch history in the making, but Election Night was that rare event that you could pick your perch. I chose Harlem as my perch. I don’t live there, but I work there once a week, tending to the cheese program at a wine bar—yes, a…
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An Open Letter to Barack Obama
Dear Brother Obama,You have no idea, really, of how profound this moment is for us. Us being the black people of the Southern United States. You think you know, because you are thoughtful, and you have studied our history. But seeing you deliver the torch so many others before you carried, year after year, decade…