For Black Millennials Who Considered Leaving When the Church Was Too Much

Thoughts from Hampton University Minister’s Conference 2018 This was my third year attending the famed Hampton University Minister’s Conference. My thoughts and reflections are still somewhat of a jumbled mass in my mind. What follows is my attempt to make sense of disorderedness in my brain in a coherent way that gives clarity to the […]

Bishop Michael Curry, an Explainer Essay

First things first. Bishop Michael Curry is the 27th Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church. That means he’s the top Episcopal bishop in all of the United States, along with other countries and territories in the Western Hemisphere. His only direct report is the Archbishop of Canterbury, the seat of the Anglican Church. […]

The Afro-Futurism of Atlanta – Pt. 2

After watching the episode “The Woods” on the critically acclaimed FX network show Atlanta, I figured it was worth exploring some of the science fiction aspects that the show has consistently presented. This is the second of a three-part series about the show and Afro-futurism. As a combined series, Atlanta has acted as a larger […]

“Wake Up Mr. West!” – The Culture of Kanye

I’ll be brief. There are, possibly, two larger ways in which to understand and make sense of entertainer, part-time genius and iconoclast, Kanye West. The first and most popular way to see him is as a troubled individual who suffered a mental breakdown following the death of his mother. This resulted in him being a […]

The Afro-Futurism of Atlanta – Pt. 1

After watching the episode “The Woods” on the critically acclaimed FX network show Atlanta, I figured it was worth exploring some of the science fiction aspects that the show has consistently presented. This is the first of a three part series about the show and Afro-futurism. From what I can tell, the series Atlanta belongs […]

“Come Sunday”: An Explainer Essay

Netflix recently released “Come Sunday,” a movie that told the story of Carlton Pearson. The story dramatized Pearson’s move from classic Pentecostalism to Christian universalism, approximately collapsing the years 1998 to 2006 into a movie format. The movie stars Chiwetel Ojiofor as Pearson and Martin Sheen as Oral Roberts, along with roles played by Danny […]

When Black Culture Goes Mainstream

It was announced on April 16, 2018 that rapper Kendrick Lamar was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music. In a society where awards seemingly get distributed like water bottles after a natural disaster, sometimes the gravity of these awarding bodies gets lost in the shuffle. This was not a Grammy nor a BET or MTV […]

Waiting For Obama

In 2009, Chicago was the United States’ bid to the International Olympic Committee to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. There was a collective sigh of relief on the South Side of Chicago when it was announced that Rio De Janeiro would be the host. Many South Side residents who would have been directly impacted by […]

What if Black America Were Its Own Country? Wakanda, a Nation on a Hill

Some of my earliest memories, ever in life, weren’t just moments with grandmother before she died when I was six, nor me carrying a monkey at my dad’s company picnic, but they were knowing that along with Martin Luther King there were men named Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey. I attended the New Concept Development […]

Unpopular Opinion: Why the Obama’s Official Portrait Should Be Him in the Tan Suit

I tuned in at work on a livestream for about 15 minutes right before Barack Obama’s portrait was to be revealed. I missed the unveiling of Michelle Obama’s, well, to be nice, portrait. I remember cheering that Kehinde Wiley had been commissioned to do Obama’s portrait and like most, I went to see his work […]

Joshua Lawrence Lazard

The blog of the one formerly known as The Uppity Negro