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"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"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"Taylor Branch lifted the Rev. Vernon Johns out of historical obscurity when he published his famous tome on the modern Civil Rights era Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 when he opened the book with the biography of him. His major contribution to the Civil Rights movement as a whole was his pastorate […]
Read more "An Original Uppity Negro: Rev. Vernon Johns"Over the past two days, two videos featuring black parents videotaping their forms of discipline have made their way onto my Facebook timeline. Please watch both of them in their entirety, I have some challenges with what’s being displayed. First, I’d like to discuss the young ladies and their father beating them. Yes, beating them. […]
Read more "My Challenge to Black Parents and the Continued Pornography of Violence"One of the most hits from posts I’ve written have come from a series of character case studies I did on “The Boondocks,” the Cartoon Network show. Now I’m not sure if it’s because of the pictures that I’m getting hits or whether it really is people stumbling upon them and reading them. I […]
Read more "A Character Case Study of “Django Unchained”"I remember seeing the trailer for Quentin’s Tarantino “Django’s Unchained” a few months back and I groaned with the rest of the black members of the audience. Honestly, it wasn’t at the casting choice of Jamie Foxx, or even seeing Leonardo DiCaprio as a slave owner, but really it was the issue of slavery. We, […]
Read more "Django’s Unchained Melody"Anyone who reads this blog with any level of consistency knows where I stand on the hot-button topics of race, religion, politics and anything else that can be devoured in the context of cultural criticism. Most people know, I self-identify as a Democratic socialist at the heart of my political being–meaning I support the idea […]
Read more "The Bias of Mainstream Media"On February 18, 2012, the family of Whitney Houston paid their final respects in an invite only, yet televised homegoing service at her home church, New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey. Initial reports had said that only BET was covering the full service, but certainly shocking to me, the major cable news networks […]
Read more "The Black Church, Homegoing Services and Whitney Houston"
Joshua Lawrence Lazard 