Dear White People Concept Trailer from Justin Simien on Vimeo. In the vein of “Higher Learning” and “School Daze” there is a spoof video that is premiering at 2014 Sundance called “Dear White People” highlighting the interactions of black faces in the white space of ivy league-esque collegiate education. I watched the trailer, and of […]
Read more "Dear Black People…"It was the summer of 1993, and the typical warmth of the midwest sun had found its way to Chicago. About four blocks from my house, an easy walking distance was, and still is, the headquarters for Operation PUSH and Jesse Jackson, Sr.’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition. I remember my mother dragging me down to the […]
Read more "Mandela and A Millennial Generation’s Connection to the Civil Rights Movement"One of the many navel-gazing pasttimes of Americans in the 21st century is to look at celebrities with no make-up. Wait, let me be specific, we look at female celebrities with no make-up. I’m not even sure the genre of male celebs in no make-up even exists. Over the past years we’ve seen the good the […]
Read more "To Wear Makeup Or Not and Further Explorations into Black Femininity"This week, in the wake of a federal government shut down, a Congress with an approval rating uniformly in single digits, the GOP party with historical low approval numbers is still failing to see just how the uber-right wing arm of the party (namely the Tea Party faction) is concretizing their place on the wrong […]
Read more "The Making of a Theocracy: Government Funding and the Crisis of Compassion"Kanye West has slid down a slope of ingratiating insanity that I’ve pinpointed has been since his mother died. The Kayne that I grew to love that produced the higher learning albums of “College Dropout,” “Late Registration,” and “Graduation” had morphed into this abstract aesthetic by the time “808s & Heartbreak” that left many of us […]
Read more "Kanye West, Hip-Hop’s Confederate Coon"Within the past ten years, as the prevalence of social media was ascending, it provided a unique opportunity for America to look into the secret closets of middle and upper class white American youth. A small peak into the closets revealed skeletons of the worse regard: this demographic, often enrolled in top-tier colleges were dressing […]
Read more "Obsessions with Blackness or Black-face?"In a rare twist of almost Orwellian irony, the government shut down was the best thing that could have happened to the HealthCare.gov website. On the same day that the U.S. Congress failed to deliver an appropriate bill to the president’s desk to sign that approved the federal budget, resulting in a government shutdown and […]
Read more "Why HealthCare.Gov Wasn’t A White House Priority"Editor’s Note: Below is an excerpt from the sermon I preached this past Sunday, August 25, 2013 as the country celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The scripture text was Acts 2:17 through 21 as follows: In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will […]
Read more "Tell Them About the Dream"Let me be honest, I rather liked “Lee Daniel’s The Butler.” I’m hoping for Academy Award nominations for the portrayals of Cecil Gaines and Gloria which were the based off of the real life story of the black butler who served across eight U.S. presidents by the names of Eugene and his wife Helene Allen. […]
Read more "From “The Help” to “The Butler”: The Troubling Politics of Hollywood"There is no secret that I’m black, and that I am a man. Okay, now that my bias is revealed perhaps I can discuss some of the challenges I had with the nature of the hashtag on Twitter that erupted earlier this week. While I was participating in my weekly diet of ratchet television in […]
Read more "Black Power Is For Black Men, an Uppity Negro Editorial Response"
Joshua Lawrence Lazard 