Notes on an Exile from American Democracy

The collective political imagination of America is never more than four years. It’s doggedly tied to the presidential election cycle. As of the publishing of this, it’s only 16 days until the next presidential election. I’m not sure quite when the future-casting of American democracy got reduced to nothing more than four years, but here […]

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“This Ain’t Free”

This is a Maundy Thursday sermon I preached entitled “This Ain’t Free” on April 2, 2015 at Duke Chapel. I took two texts, Paul’s epistle, 1 Corinthians 11 and the then recent album by Kendrick Lamar “To Pimp a Butterfly.” While the hip-hop lyricist Kendrick Lamar opted to use an expletive for the second track […]

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New Notes of a Native Son

I feel it’s worth noting before I begin the review of HBO’s “Native Son” that I’ve never read the epic novel by Richard Wright. For some that might exclude me from offering critique at all. But if that’s the case, fault my high school English track. I was in a section that required us to […]

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The All-American Crappy Meal™

Standing underneath a portrait of whom most consider the greatest president whoever took the oath of office, Abraham Lincoln, Trump presides over a pornography of fast food abominations worthy only of broke college students after 10pm on a school night. Not national college football championship winners who are taking their, probably, first trip to the […]

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Don’t Sit, Stand

President Donald Trump, right, bows his head as Relentless Church Pastor John Gray, left, says a prayer during a meeting with inner city pastors in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2018. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) On Wednesday, August 1, President Donald Trump met with prominent black clergy at the […]

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