About bawstephanierobinson

So, all of this hoopla over the hairdo of 16 year-old Olympic gymnastics champion Gabby Douglas this past week was pretty pathetic.       All this hoopla about Gabby’s hair instead of her incredible and historic gymnastic accomplishments on the world stage…pathetic.       That said, there were some interesting threads (no pun intended) that […]

Needless to say, it’s been a pretty rough road for anyone African-American and famous named Jackson lately.       Not good at all.  In fact, the two families that can easily be described as the First Families of our community in the second half of the 20th century are seriously going through it right now. […]

Sad to say, but the troubling issue of self-hatred in the African-American community is rearing its ugly head yet again. The internet has been aflame with chatter about the facial features of Blue Ivy, Jay-Z and Beyonce’s baby girl and the release of Eric Benet’s provocative new song, “Redbone Girl.”       After a recent […]

Last year, you’ll recall, there was a big scandal involving Abercrombie & Fitch and their marketing of padded and push up bras and bikini tops to little girls as young as 7 years old.       Well, unfortunately, there’s another scandal involving sexualizing our children.       By now, many of us have either viewed […]

The question I’m about to ask might raise a few eyebrows. Here it is: When it comes to issues of race, should we censor ourselves when speaking to those outside of our race?       Let’s start with record-breaking Olympic sprinter Michael Johnson. Johnson, now a commentator for the BBC, recently said: "Difficult as it […]

Well guys, as you well know, we, black folk, take our religion seriously.       That’s why when we hear about church leaders acting far-less-than-holy, it causes such a stir… Case in point: A Houston pastor and his wife were recently arrested and charged with conning their former congregation at Bethel Institutional Missionary Baptist Church […]

‘Tis the season to be feisty as election year politics are in full swing.       Last week, a Republican-led congressional committee voted 23-17 to recommend holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for withholding documents on a controversial gun scheme known as Operation Fast and Furious.     Operation Fast and Furious was […]

You know, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to sometimes asking the question, “Are we our own worst enemy?”       I’ve recently seen a number of headlines that have had me wondering, again, “Are we, black people, our own worst enemy?”       Cases in point: First, there was this nonsense with that […]

A 14-year-old boy was eating pizza with his sister in a neighborhood in northern Chicago when a man fired shots into the pizzeria, hitting the teen in the head and killing him. The night before, a 33-year old man was shot near a holiday party in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago as partygoers ran […]

This Sunday, of course, we celebrate the most wonderful human beings on earth—mothers, because, literally, none of us would be here without them. Mother’s Day is a special day for us to acknowledge the mothers in our lives as well as those mothers who have passed on; their love, their sacrifices, their ongoing influence on […]

The sad saga of the very public divorce of former NFL star and current sports analyst Deion Sanders has, of course, recently been all over the news. Not good. Last week, the mug shots of his estranged wife, Pilar Sanders, were plastered all over the internet and other media as she was booked on simple […]

I often wonder how far some people will to go to get what they want and what rules they’ll follow or break along the way. Just this past week, I was on BlackAmericaWeb.com reading about that aspiring actress, Racquel Bailey, who rented the billboard near Tyler Perry’s studio in the ATL, basically asking him to […]