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 […]
Read more "Unpopular Opinion: Why the Obama’s Official Portrait Should Be Him in the Tan Suit"Last week, an 84-year-old Negro from a world many of us wouldn’t even recognize decided to “spill the tea” in a way that rivals podcasts like “The Read” or “Real Housewives After Show” with Andy Cohen. Quincy Jones, the music mogul, in an interview with David Marchese and published by New York Magazine, divulged the […]
Read more "Why We Need More Quincy Jones’ in the World"Anyone who was paying attention to Black Twitter during Justin Timberlake’s Superbowl LII halftime performance would be under the belief that the totality of black Americans were singularly against him because of his treatment of Janet Jackson in Superbowl XXXVIII. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. It appears as though many who participate in […]
Read more "On Justin Timberlake: How Black Twitter Gets It Wrong"In a crowded television market with networks not just competing with traditional line-in cable programming but with the ever-increasingly might of streaming services that are offering original programming that network television shows will never air, a network-based TV show that gets renewed past one season is becoming the new high bar jump. One such show is […]
Read more "Where ‘The Good Place’ Goes Bad"I was listening to Larry Wilmore’s podcast “Black on the Air” for the first time and it was a recent one interviewing Ta-Nehesi Coates, and it was cool to hear him FINALLY being interviewed about these things by a black interviewer. While it was still an interview, the banter between two intelligent black men as […]
Read more "In the Error of Trump"I. Last week, author and essayist Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote a full-scale assault of fellow writer and author Ta-Nehesi Coates in an New York Times op-ed entitled “How Ta-Nehesi Coates Gives Whiteness Power.” He makes the case as to why this country’s devotion to race as a construct will continue to perpetuate the deep divisions […]
Read more "How Thomas Chatterton Williams Gets Race Right"I. It wasn’t until the second season of Insecure that I saw the hashtag #LawrenceHive take on new life. This hashtag community sprouted up as a season one plot-twist made the central character villified, and suddenly Lawrence emerged as the victim. There was a near unanimous celebration of Lawrence by the end of season one. It’s […]
Read more "Why Black Men Need #LawrenceHive"Two things happened this morning. Facebook reminded me that 12 years ago I joined. It was only three days after my arrival at Fisk University following my displacement because of floodwaters in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina’s landfall. It was a big deal back then to be on Facebook. At the time, it was only […]
Read more "Atlanta, 2006"Because the administration of Trump was a veritable dumpster fire even before the inauguration, the Democrats never had the usual trial by fire and public shaming that the losing party normally gets. There was never an opportunity for the Democratic party to listen to its constituents and perform a full autopsy on just how catastrophic […]
Read more "Dead on Arrival, Why Kamala Harris Shouldn’t Be the Presumptive Presidential Nominee"