The American cultural memory seems to have lengthened. At least as far as social media outlets are concerned as well as the blogosphere and the plethora of e-media sites. As we still are affixed under the shadow of a “post-” era of Ferguson, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin et. al., every new moment we experience […]
Read more "The ‘Common’ Problem in Misunderstanding Racism"Okay, I’ve come down from my emotional ivory tower about last night’s #Scandal episode and I’m back on solid ground: Firstly, that would have never happened. A black man walking out with a shotgun who openly fired it would have been immediately shot with cameras filming. I was about five minutes late when I tuned […]
Read more "My Thoughts on “The Lawn Chair” Episode of ‘Scandal’"Oppression messes with the mind. That’s a sentiment that has stuck with me in earnest during the second half of 2014. As I personally embroiled myself with online conversations around race and gender that I found supremely frustrating and watch a nation grapple with race in a different manner following the deaths of Eric Garner […]
Read more "Being True to Our Native Land: Why Thomas Chatterton Williams gets the race conversation wrong"I just watched the latest episode of Fox’s breakout mid-season show “Empire” and as the show’s central character Cookie Lyon’s took the podium that was indeed acting as a Jezebel–Queen Jezebel that is. The name Jezebel is the English transliteration from the Hebrew Bible of the wife of the Israelite King Ahab who married a non-Israelite […]
Read more "An “Empire” Divided: Reimagining Cookie Lyon as a 21st Century Jezebel"In full disclosure, I am a native Chicagoan. I proudly state “I was born and raised, South Side of Chicago” and I wear it like a blue ribbon earned in a 1st grade spelling bee. Being able to claim the South Side of Chicago is a badge of honor amongst other blacks like being able […]
Read more "Living in District Boundaries: Why Jackie Robinson West being stripped of their title is all about Race"One of the challenges of doing cultural criticism is when the critic begins to infer their own meaning onto something that was not intended by the author or the creator of the work. With my theological background, we learned about textual criticism when it came to the exegetical work of the biblical literature. One […]
Read more "Kendrick Lamar and Black Hip Hop Masculinity"Beyonce’s rendition of “Precious Lord” fell rather flat at the 2015 Grammys. That’s a commentary that didn’t make it into many news stories the day after. Most stories used descriptors as “resplendent” and “emotional” to detail what the artist did in her rendering of the classic gospel piece. Social media, particularly the eponymous Black Twitter, […]
Read more "When “Precious Lord” Doesn’t Lead Home"We got out of the cab at 7:55 pm that let us off on the corner of 8th and 49th rushing to the theater as we were trying to make sure we weren’t late to the curtain of Broadway’s “The Book of Mormon.” I had marginally heard about the show and knew it was a musical. […]
Read more "The Cost of Free Speech: The Racism of Equal Opportunity Offenders"On a Monday morning, at 12 midnight, R&B crooner D’Angelo dropped the album Black Messiah with the Vanguards. It wasn’t quite the shock that Beyoncé’s surprise album a year ago produced namely because D’Angelo has been working on an album for quite some time–and that time has finally ended, and ended with an album to show […]
Read more "D’Angelo’s “Black Messiah” Shows us Resurrection is Possible"In lieu of flashpoint moments that have directly affected black Americans in the recent months, particularly the rape allegations of Bill Cosby, the tragic saga of Andrew “I am Delivert” Caldwell and the Church of God in Christ, and the prolonged moment of Ferguson that has has managed to arch over a few months, I […]
Read more "Nothing to Lose, A Reflection"
Joshua Lawrence Lazard 