James Baldwin, famed author of The Fire Next Time, Go Tell It on the Mountain, and Giovanni’s Room, was one of the most notable expatriate artists of his generation. Twenty-four-year-old Baldwin left his native Harlem for Paris in 1948, seeking, in his words, “a refuge from the American madness.” It’s no wonder why. Baldwin, a […]
There’s no debating it: Today’s Republican Party is an extension of the same political tradition (American social conservatism) that once opposed the abolition of slavery and the expansion of civil rights. Today’s Democratic Party is an extension of the same political tradition (American social liberalism) that abolished slavery and expanded civil rights. I don’t point
In all of human history, there has perhaps never been a more ardent believer in the idea that any publicity is good publicity than twenty-four-time Grammy-winning recording artist Kanye West. Ye—as he’s been legally known since 2021—thrives on controversy, provocation, and quite literally anything that will put him in the spotlight. He further proved there
Garrett Augustus Morgan Sr., born on March 4, 1877 in Claysville, Kentucky, is a name that comes up often during each Black History Month. The inventor, businessman, activist, and self-proclaimed “Black Edison” is best remembered today as the inventor of an early version of the three-way traffic light. He was a member of the burgeoning
In 2011, State Farm achieved television immortality with nothing more than a red polo and a pair of khakis. The iconic “Jake from State Farm” insurance mascot was born in a brief thirty-second commercial featuring Jake Stone, an actual State Farm employee from Bloomington, Illinois. Despite the commercial’s instant and enduring success, Stone never reprised
Two of the most enduring blights on the history of African American culture are the concepts of being “too black” and “not black enough.” Though heavily featured among African Americans, the concepts, which are closely linked to colorism and identity politics, are by no means exclusive to them. The favorability of fair skin is a
If you’re a regular MSNBC or Fox News enjoyer, you’re no doubt privy to both networks’ recurring the-other-guys-are-literally-Satan routine. If you don’t watch either network, you may catch wind of something along these lines from acquaintances, friends, or family members. If not them, then from politicians, social media posts, Internet memes, picket signs, bumper stickers,
In 1962, novelist William Melvin Kelley provided “a hip assist” to white New York Times readers by translating the black slang term “woke” as “well-informed, up-to-date.” Four decades later, singer-rapper-songwriter Erykah Badu revealed through her song “Master Teacher” that she “stay[s] woke,” and implored her audience to do the same. The early 2010s saw the
The paradox of tolerance, first outlined by Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper, explains that the attractive glitter of universal tolerance may not actually be gold. The paradox suggests that if a society is truly tolerant of everything then it must also be tolerant of intolerance, introducing a slippery slope that could eventually see intolerance completely supplanting
There’s a reason cut-and-dried contests between good and evil occur more frequently in fairytales than reality. Such fantasies aren’t subject to humanity’s “absolute chaos of differences” that Hannah Arendt wrote political bodies seek to find common threads in. This chaos rarely allows for situations in which the good guys are always good and the bad
