\”…Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing!\” Countee Cullen, “Yet Do I Marvel” The final two lines of my favorite poem, “Yet Do I Marvel” by Countee Cullen, address a topic that has entertained much discussion in Black art and scholarship. In the poem, …
The Black athlete, like the Black musician, politician, and the other varieties of stardom, has historically been victim to glaring double standards in their field. Serena Williams, for example, is criticized more severely than her white counterparts for openly disagreeing with line judges. White tennis players like Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova receive veritable slaps …
If your social media feeds are anything like mine, you can’t get very far in them without catching wind of the latest celebrity being “cancelled” or seeing someone propose who the next one to cancel should be. Twitter hashtags and the influence of widespread movements for accountability, namely #MeToo and the current cries for accountability …
The call for resistance in the United States has been heard and answered. Five days after writing an article about the disproportionate death of Black Americans historically and presently, I witnessed the now-infamous video of George Floyd\’s murder and the American public\’s response to it. To quote Dr. Cornel West, what we have now is …
If there is anyone thing that everyone in our increasingly divided world can agree on, it is that 2020 has been a bizarre year thus far. It has seen the ramping up and full force of the coronavirus pandemic, a new American epoch of antiracist activism, protests and riots, a slew of American lynchings, the …
\”It would be fatal,\” said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his most famous speech, \”for the nation to overlook the urgency of this moment.\” Dr. King, of course, was referring to the strides being made in the civil rights movement and the importance of recognizing how crucial that moment would be for the future …
In 2015, Mayor Bowser and the D.C. Interagency Council on Homelessness (ICH) began working on the \”Homeward DC\” initiative, and its goal of ending long-term homelessness by making it a \”rare, brief, and non-recurring experience\” in the District by 2020. A very ambitious proposition, the goal was not met, but this is not to say …
I first saw Hancock when it was released in theaters twelve years ago, and my mother led me back outside before it ended because of how much Will Smith was cursing. I remember her surprise at hearing such language in a PG-13 film. I didn’t encounter Hancock again until years later when I caught some …
Featured photo – Crowd of people gathered to watch the lynching of Jesse Washington, Waco, Texas, May 15, 1916. Immediately after his quick confession based conviction, Washington was castrated and then slowly burned. By Everett Historical. Other photos courtesy of the Library of Congress (LOC) Just over one week ago, the United States House of …
A recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll confirms what many of us already know: Black voters prefer Joe Biden. The factor most responsible for this, of course, is his attachment to Barack Obama’s presidency and cultural icon-status. Biden and his supporters hope to pivot the nation back to Obama-era politics, and it’s possible that some supporters are …
