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Diddy’s Best Friend Charlie Liucci is Being Loud About His Next Moves Will Be Following Acquittal
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Who Died and Made Tavis King?
Who put Tavis Smiley in charge? Over the past two months African Americans have emerged as equal partners in a multi-racial, intergenerational, bipartisan, national coalition led by the most exciting political candidate of the past four decades, who also happens to be the first viable African-American presidential possibility in our history. So why is Tavis…
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She'll Take That
At Sunday’s Grammy Awards ceremony, Alicia Keys graciously thanked Prince for handing her the prize for best female R&B vocal performance for her smash “No One.” But she has so much more to thank him for. T.S. Eliot once wrote that, “bad poets imitate; good poets steal.” And Keys’ latest effort “As I Am” leaves…
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The Bourgie Blues
Alana and Craig Wilson live in a predominately white, middle-class subdivision in Virginia’s Fairfax County, just outside of Washington, D.C. Across the Potomac River, Terry and Rodney Jefferson reside in majority-black Prince George’s County, Maryland. The Wilsons and Jeffersons are black and middle-class. Both families, deeply concerned about the world their children will inherit, do…
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Immersion Therapy
Not my idea, not really. Credit mostly belongs to a poet friend of mine. We were discussing some independent movie by an unknown black director he had just seen at a special screening at his local art house. It would be cool, said The Poet, to be able to see more movies like that, movies…
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Blackness: A Quick and Dirty Primer
In the The New York Times last Sunday, Jill Nelson dismissed the idea that black people ever really wondered whether Sen. Barack Obama was “black enough.” My memory of how Obama was being discussed a year ago is different from Nelson’s. Today, however, black people who question Obama’s authenticity are indeed a fringe. So what’s…
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The Blackest Eye
As she observes the racial dynamics at play in the Democratic presidential contest, Toni Morrison must be somewhere biting her nails. The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer never struck me as the nervous type, but if ever there was a case for the jitters, it is now. In recent months, Morrison has had to stand back and…
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With Friends Like These …
Dear Mr. White: After reading your hypertensive response to my article, I could not help but wonder if the straw man would press assault charges. Having read your work on previous occasions, I will admit to being a bit surprised by that you took the tone of a feuding rapper at my suggestion that there…
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The Democrats' Texas Hold'em
-What is Sen. Barack Obama going to do about his Latino problem? No use pretending he doesn’t have one. The numbers don’t lie. Sen. Hillary Clinton crushed him among Hispanic voters on Super Tuesday, defeating him by 20, 30 and 40-point margins in places like Arizona, New Mexico, California and New York. Obama’s poor showing…
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Secretary of 'Soul'?
Quincy Jones, bandleader, composer, producer and Grammy-laden powerhouse of the entertainment world, was on CNN on Inauguration Day, getting personal and global at the same time. The much-traveled Jones had been back to his old stomping ground, Garfield High School in Seattle. There, he chatted up a group of students and discovered, to his dismay, that they…
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Strip Mall Medicine
Tucked away at the edge of a ramshackle strip mall on the black side of town in Montgomery, Ala., there’s an AIDS clinic. When I was last there, in 2005, the mall featured just a couple of weather-beaten shops—a dollar store, a beauty parlor—and this nondescript clinic, quietly declaring its presence without using the word…
