Hopefully I can keep this short, but I want to offer this as a reflection piece as I read a Facebook post that said: The spirit of the prophet Nat Turner has descended upon Dallas. We must pray for all. King said that “riots are the language of the unheard”! But when riots are unheard […]
Read more "The Modern American Slave Insurrection, c. 2016"The dawn of Wednesday, July 6, 2016 brought about a renewed wave of anxiety in the country as yet another black man was killed by the police under questionable circumstances. In conditions strikingly similar to that of Eric Garner, who was murdered by the Staten Island cops in 2014, the deceased, Alton Sterling, was a resident […]
Read more "Murdered By No One"Black pop-culture this week has been dominated by the firestorm of commentaries and stories emanating from the firebrand acceptance speech that Jesse Williams, the actor of “Grey’s Anatomy” delivered upon receiving Black Entertainment Television’s (BET) humanitarian award at their annual awards show. The entire transcript is here, and it’s worth watching or reading. My mind […]
Read more "9 Things to Help You Understand Jesse Williams, Cultural Appropriation and General Blackness"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"Ever since Destiny’s Child disbanded and Beyoncé Knowles, the lead singer for the group made a go for it as a solo artist, she’s had hit after hit after hit. We all looked up one day, and she had somehow become this artistic juggernaut who couldn’t seem to fail. She was the epitome of what […]
Read more "Made in Our Own Image: The Gospel According to Beyoncé"“My concern is the arrival of new ground that replaces…specific places as primary signifiers of identity.” –Willie Jennings from The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race I’m not even sure if the phrase “the black blogosphere” is appropriate anymore to denote that which is the conglomerate of black social media commentary, Black Twitter, news […]
Read more "Beyonce, Kendrick and Me"It’s time for a new black male aesthetic. Especially one that captures decolonized postmodern black masculinity as well as one that has ontologically transcendent capabilities. In simpler terms, an aesthetic that allows for black masculinity to not be defined by archaic norms in the realm of fashion, black male-to-male relationships and how one images themselves for the sake […]
Read more "Transcending America: How Russell Westbrook, Odell Beckham and Cameron Newton Have Changed Black Masculinity"