Community Checkup

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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The U.S. is #1! In incarcerations, that is. A few days ago the Pew Center for on the States released a study showing that the incarceration rate is at an all time high. From the Washington Post article:
With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both [...]

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Can black culture be defined?
We’ve had some discussion on this topic in the earlier “sellout” post and here is part 2. Again, a piece by McWhorter touching on the issue of the “fluidity and complexity” of cultural definitions. This time he attempts to put some parameters on the definition:
What is black culture? Definitions [...]

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In his NYT op-ed, a chief consultant for Al Gore’s presidential campaign, Ted Devine, summed up my sentiments about superdelegates exactly:
If the superdelegates determine the party’s nominee before primary and caucus voters have rendered a clear verdict, Democrats risk losing the trust that we are building with voters today. The perception that the votes of [...]

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Melissa Harris-Lacewell wrote an interesting piece about the issue of race vs. gender in voting decisions for black women. She nicely breaks down why the popular notion in the media that black women have chosen race over gender in their support of Barack is a flawed one. She explains that…
It is not [...]

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A sellout, or Uncle Tom, is one of the worst insults that can be levied towards a black person by another black person. I’ve been called a lot of things in my day, but being called a sellout was one the times that angered me the most. I remember thinking, “Who does he [...]

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It’s no secret that the Clintons have been playing dirty. Smart, but dirty. The question remains as to whether their tactics will be able to stem the gigantic tidal wave of support behind Obama. I don’t think they will.
Plenty of folk, such as Ron Walters of the University of Maryland, have [...]

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I love the fact that King’s birthday is a national holiday, but I also often become frustrated by the oversimplification of his message seen in the media, politics, and education. Everyone knows about King’s fight for racial justice, his belief in non-violence, and a few words of his I have a dream speech. [...]

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A king, he truly was. More to come on the observance of his birthday…

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There’s still Nevada to go, but I’m most interested in South Carolina next week. It will be the first real test of how much support Obama has from the black community.I also see it as being a gauge of how far some in the black community have come in dealing with the fear of the [...]

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