Category Archives: Uncategorized

A sightation is a term I coined to refer to a visual reference, an optical echo that re-stages some primary, illustrated source. Angela Y. Davis has been one of the most eloquent critics of contemporary sightations of historical images that empty them of political content by substituting a distorted replication that represses radical resistance againstContinue reading “Odd Sightations”

Gentle, quiet, well-mannered black boys are unrecognizable actors in American history; instead, these children are most always fiendish brutes in the cultural imagination and reified as such in daily life. The attempted crucifixion of Brenton Butler exemplifies this unfortunate truth. On Sunday morning, May 7, 2000, a white woman was shot in the face byContinue reading “On Black Boys in American History (Part 2)”

This is the season for wishing, so I’d like to offer a few of mine. I wish that history meant more to young people, growing up saturated with instant facts and data, to see history as being more than social media timelines. Technological “advancement” has elevated the significance of media and diminished the value ofContinue reading “Models Monday: Wishes”

I just finished reading my friend Dr. Carmen Kynard’s brilliant post about seven-year-old Tiana Parker being sent home from the Oklahoma Charter school where she was enrolled because of her hairstyle. The school’s dress code does not allow “hairstyles such as dreadlocks, afros, mohawks and other faddish styles.”  Kynard highlights the political nature of beauty–especially as it gets articulatedContinue reading “Black Women and the Politics of Beauty”

In the introduction to her book Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present, Deborah Willis cites Ben Arogundade who provocatively frames the subject of the moral and political implications of beauty: “in literary terms, black beauty remains a cause without a portfolio…Who can really talk of the folly of beauty when thereContinue reading “Beauty, Human Rights, and the Zimmerman Verdict”

Today, President Obama signed legislation to award the Congressional gold medal to the four little girls who were killed in their home church on September 15, 1963. The Robertson and McNair families have been supportive of the legislation since it was proposed but members of the Wesley and Collins families have not. The latter familiesContinue reading “The Congressional Gold Medal for Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley”

Today, the striking Memphis sanitation workers whose efforts King supported in 1968 are once again concerned about being diminished as workers, as persons, and as citizens as the city is considering privatizing sanitation work and thus effectively eliminating the Union. 45 years after King’s assassination on this day in Memphis, the fight for dignity continues.

I must admit, I expected that the N.C.A.A. would give Penn State’s football program the “death penalty” and thus completely shut it down. While that was not the verdict, the punishment they meted out–the $60 million fine, the four-year bowl ban, the initial scholarships being reduced from 25-15 per year for four years, the vacatingContinue reading “The Verdict on Penn State”

A friend sent me a link to an interview with Toni Morrison where she offers a critique of the offerings currently found in American popular culture. Her sentiments aptly capture its limitations: “I really want some meaning. It used to be easy to toss it off. Now it’s harder and harder. You have to navigateContinue reading “Nourishment”