Pretty self-explanatory; these are the issues that deal with modern and popular culture that have nothing to really do with religion or the church
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?"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"On Tuesday, August 13th, 2013, Kendrick Lamar, up and coming West Coast rapper who burst onto the scene with mixtapes that got rave reviews and an album good kid m.A.A.d city that stays in heavy rotation when I hit the road, dropped a guest verse on Big Sean’s Control album that included the following lines: I heard […]
Read more "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Hip Hop: Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z and Harry Belafonte"Steve Perry tricked us. We all thought he was “one of us” to put the phrase colloquially. But actually, after all is said and done, he’s not. He’s one of “them.” By one of “them” I’m referring to that “we are respectable Negroes” ilk that has been getting some traction lately in the press. Seeing […]
Read more "Steve Perry’s Bait and Switch on the Black Community"In short, the sh*t finally hit the fan in Detroit. It was just as bad as all of us had heard and feared. For the better part of the last ten years or so, Detroit made national news for all the wrong reasons and uncomfortably, the faces were always black. Who can forget the antics […]
Read more "The New Jerusalem: A Chance of Redemption for Detroit"I began to pen this less than one hour after the press conference occurred. Apparently the president of the United States, Barack Obama appeared at a regular press briefing held by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, and fielded one question surrounding the death of Trayvon Martin and the verdict in the George Zimmerman case […]
Read more "Restoring Blackness: Obama’s Commentary on Trayvon Martin"
Joshua Lawrence Lazard 