Who did that Richard Sherman think he was? Justin Bieber? Making the memes this week is a comparison of Sherman, the Seattle Seahawks cornerback who Twitter racists labeled a thug because of his un-criminal act of boasting about his recent game-saving play, and Bieber, the pop star who Twitter racists have been fairly quiet about […]
It seems some folks need a history lesson. Or maybe a simple lesson on cultural dignity will do. Images of fliers for events that are supposed to be honoring Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, which falls on Jan. 15., and is celebrated on Monday, Jan. 20., are being circulated on social media. That wouldn’t be […]
I guess I should be shocked that a judge and a psychologist in Texas would see a rich white kid as a victim of his privilege before seeing the people he killed as victims of his drunkenness. But I’m not. That’s the thing about privilege; it extends to being able to rewrite rules and to […]
I’ll begin this column off with a confession: I love, love, love cupcakes. I see my local cupcake dealer for a fix once a week. I usually buy two – usually a coconut one and a birthday cake one. I eat half of one at night – well, OK sometimes a whole one – after […]
Don’t think for one minute that they don’t know this. In fact, chances are they know this all too well. In an act that rivals the irrationality and hatefulness that led lawmakers in some Southern states to shut down entire school systems in the late 1950s rather than abide by federal desegregation orders, Congressional Republicans […]
WASHINGTON – All things considered, Valerie Jarrett seems unflappable. Jarrett, President Obama’s senior adviser and the woman who an administration source once told The New York Times was “the single, most influential person in the Obama White House,” recently joined some of my columnist colleagues and me for dinner in the nation’s capital. Even though […]
In a way, I pity Miley Cyrus. I don’t pity her because her hapless attempt at twerking and tongue-twirling at the recent Video Music Awards had more people asking, “What the hell?” than saying “Wow!” I don’t pity her because many are condemning her act as racist – among other things, she fondled and slapped […]
When I think about the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, I think about all the young black people back in 1963 whose footsteps were powered by their pain. And their dreams. Many, like U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, then a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and […]
ORLANDO, Fla – Raising black boys to be successful in a society dominated by forces that are bent on breaking them instead of nurturing them can be tough. And not just for those black boys born to poor single mothers. Filmmakers Michele Stephenson and her husband, Joe Brewster – two successful, Ivy League-educated parents – […]
Too bad Alvin Wilkerson wasn’t George Zimmerman. If he was, he might be walking around free today for a tragedy that was more of an accident than a crime. But unlike Zimmerman, who is now free more than a year after fatally shooting Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, and claiming it was in self-defense, […]
When it comes to our use of the English language, it seems that black people just can’t win, no matter what end of the mastery spectrum we fall on. This past week Rachel Jeantel, the last person to talk to murdered teenager Trayvon Martin, took the stand in the trial of George Zimmerman, a watchman […]
By now, Orlando Shaw and the 14 women who gave birth to his 22 children probably have Harriet Tubman turning over in her grave. That’s because Shaw and his baby mamas are doing what abolitionists like Tubman tried to help other slaves escape from being forced to do: To become nothing more than breeders – […]