Community Checkup

Everyone’s going bananas over the Vogue cover with LeBron and Gisele and the King Kong image it conjures up. Those who take issue with it say that the cover perpetuates negative stereotypes of black men as aggressive and animalistic. Then there’s the complaint over the stereotype of successful black men’s preference for white [...]

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A mini “TechCheck”…
A frequent commenter on this site, JJ, recently wrote me asking if there was any data to show how much blacks agree with some of the frequently mentioned views of Reverend Wright. I thought it was a pretty interesting question given the back-and-forth in the press and blogosphere lately about how how [...]

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Pat Buchanan has some issues with Obama’s race speech which he expresses in a piece titled, “A Brief for Whitey.” Apparently he feels like the discussion on race has been too one-sided and he wants black people to begin to listen to the white perspective (a group that he refers to as the “Silent Majority,” [...]

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Halfway through, I already knew that this was the greatest speech on race that I had ever heard a politician deliver. Truly historic. The way he placed the issues in historical, individual, and universal contexts was really unprecedented in the world of politics. He used an issue which marred his reputation (his [...]

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Bloggingheads.tv has a pretty interesting conversation on their site between Randall Kennedy and John McWhorter, two authors who have had some pretty strong disagreements in the past (well, at least one). It’s a great video to watch because of the format of discussion. It’s not set up as a debate for the two [...]

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When Keith Olbermann is on point he offers some of the best commentary around. Last night, he nailed it with his comments on the pattern of the Clinton campaign to use subtle race and religious-based tactics to smear Obama. It’s 10 minutes long but worth watching in its entirety.
You need to a [...]

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Only in South Carolina…
A black civil rights activist is fighting to close a store that sells KKK robes and T-shirts emblazoned with racial slurs. David Kennedy is confident he can make it happen. After all, he says he owns the building.Since 1996, the Redneck Shop has operated in an old movie theater that, according to [...]

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Many people have commented over the past few days about Obama being darkened in Clinton’s ad. Although I do take strong objection to the other tactics by the Clinton campaign to “blacken” Obama and make him appear like an outsider, I don’t necessarily place this ad in the same category. As FactCheck concluded, the [...]

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Strength is a defining characteristic of black people and culture. Strength (along with hope/faith) is what has gotten us through hell to where we are today and it’s what keeps us moving forward. But as Terrie Williams points out in her new book, Black Pain: It Just Looks Like We’re Not Hurting, there [...]

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*****
[Update: Much to my chagrin, the final episode will not be shown on OnDemand tonight. We'll all have to wait until Sunday. Insert Senator Clay Davis' tagline here____]
*****
The Wire, the greatest TV show ever, will be coming to an official end on Sunday. However, with OnDemand you can check it out today, which [...]

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