Last week, an 84-year-old Negro from a world many of us wouldn’t even recognize decided to “spill the tea” in a way that rivals podcasts like “The Read” or “Real Housewives After Show” with Andy Cohen. Quincy Jones, the music mogul, in an interview with David Marchese and published by New York Magazine, divulged the […]
Read more "Why We Need More Quincy Jones’ in the World"Anyone who was paying attention to Black Twitter during Justin Timberlake’s Superbowl LII halftime performance would be under the belief that the totality of black Americans were singularly against him because of his treatment of Janet Jackson in Superbowl XXXVIII. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. It appears as though many who participate in […]
Read more "On Justin Timberlake: How Black Twitter Gets It Wrong"I. Last week, author and essayist Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote a full-scale assault of fellow writer and author Ta-Nehesi Coates in an New York Times op-ed entitled “How Ta-Nehesi Coates Gives Whiteness Power.” He makes the case as to why this country’s devotion to race as a construct will continue to perpetuate the deep divisions […]
Read more "How Thomas Chatterton Williams Gets Race Right"I. It wasn’t until the second season of Insecure that I saw the hashtag #LawrenceHive take on new life. This hashtag community sprouted up as a season one plot-twist made the central character villified, and suddenly Lawrence emerged as the victim. There was a near unanimous celebration of Lawrence by the end of season one. It’s […]
Read more "Why Black Men Need #LawrenceHive"Two things happened this morning. Facebook reminded me that 12 years ago I joined. It was only three days after my arrival at Fisk University following my displacement because of floodwaters in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina’s landfall. It was a big deal back then to be on Facebook. At the time, it was only […]
Read more "Atlanta, 2006"Earlier this week, HBO issued a press release that show runners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss of “Game of Thrones” were leading the charge for a show entitled “Confederate.” The press release states that it will posit what would have happened post-Battle of Antietam in 1862 where a lost field order fell into the hands […]
Read more "Black Fears and White Tears, HBO’s “Confederate”"We forget that it was Oprah Winfrey who handed black pop culture’s one-dimensional image of black men. It was 2004 and social media as we know it didn’t exist. The black blogosphere was still in its gestational phases, and online dating for black folks was relegated to hook ups on Black Planet websites and […]
Read more "On Black Masculinities, Oprah Winfrey, Tyler Perry, “Queen Sugar” and “4:44”"A Sunday morning Facebook post asked “Is Black Lives Matter still a thing?” and I immediately did an eye-roll. The technical answer is in the affirmative. They still are a thing. I still get emails from them. I also know that in many activist circles that Black Lives Matters functions as a real, almost tangible entity. […]
Read more "Lessons I Learned from #BlackLivesMatters"Michael Eric Dyson penned an essay paying homage to the black digital intelligentsia in 2015 that paid homage to names that had some level of household recognition amongst black folks as well as some non-black circles naming people such as Ta-Nehesi Coates, Jelani Cobb, Melissa Harris Perry, Marc Lamont Hill, Jamilah Lemieux and Salamisha Temet. […]
Read more "A Requiem for Black Intellectualism"I caved some time last year and signed up for a music subscription service and figured that since I was paying for a service it would be worth changing my music listening habits. Part of that resulted in my rediscovery of old classics that the music service thought I would like. For example, I […]
Read more "Hip Hop’s Soundtrack for the Spiritual but Not Religious"
Joshua Lawrence Lazard 