WHY “ALL LIVES MATTER” FOLKS ARE FOS

How offended, terrified, or angry would you become if I said “Dogs’ Lives Matter” and supported a movement around that brand? You’d likely answer “Not at all” because your cognition permits you to reason that focusing on due respect for dogs and their well-being doesn’t even remotely suggest a hatred for humans, or any other […]

SUNDAY SMACK: BLACK UBER CAR DRAMA?

This week’s Sunday Smack concerns a personal friend of mine, who’s worked as an Uber driver in a major US city for the past two years. My friend, let’s call him Rhino for this post, is an African descendant and dresses for work in a conservative suit and a fedora each day. He has a customer base that […]

WELCOME TO 2016 — WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO COUNT THE BODIES?

It harms the spirit to think that the 2016 presidential election has distilled our collective vision to a choice between a war hawk who will assuredly leave a trail of Black and Brown limp bodies — as well as a few white Slavic ones — across four continents, and another candidate where there’s a widely-held […]

THE BLACK, BROWN & OLIVE TERRORIST CONTINUUM

The recent murders of of Orlando LGBT patrons at The Pulse nightclub and British MP Jo Cox make me recall walking near the Tribeca area of New York City last New Year’s Eve, and observing what appeared to be a religious zealot on Chambers Street screaming at high volumes about giving “Our Souls to Jesus […]

MUHAMMAD ALI THOUGHTS

My meditations of a post-Muhammad Ali America hit on a sad reality that we still have too many White folks — and let’s be sure to include an excessive number of the Black ones as well — who view the words and actions of confident Black folks as “Cocky.” “Too aggressive.” “Arrogant.” Or much worse. […]

SUNDAY SMACK: WHAT ABOUT THIS CHINESE WASH-THE-BLACK-OFF COMMERCIAL?

My friend Anisha Moon, a musician (you can see her here, trading lyrics with Leon Ware), and entrepreneur, posted this Chinese laundry detergent commercial on her Facebook page. Here’s the story flow. 1. An Asian woman is washing clothes. 2. An African descendent man appears, apparently taking a break from painting. 3. And he finds […]

IF ONLY FREDDIE GRAY WAS A POLICE CAR

Of course cop cars matter! So do the lives of police officers! And guess what? Freddie Gray’s life mattered! While I’m making my rounds of citing who and what matters, allow me to state what should be obvious: Black lives matter. Are you mad because I ended that last sentence with bold characters, and didn’t […]

ZIMMERMAN’S LYRIC: SELLING THE GUN HE USED TO KILL TRAYVON MARTIN HAS DEEPER MEANING

I didn’t want to spend too much time discussing George Zimmerman’s decision to sell the gun he used to kill 17 year-old Trayvon Martin, since doing so only contributes to his public relations platform. But I want to point out the important and converging symbolism in what Zimmerman is doing when he referred to […]

SUNDAY SMACK: LIFE UNDER TRUMP?

By now, you’ve seen the Boston Globe’s (satire?) front page that’s supposed to predict what a Donald Trump presidency would look like in a year. [PDF.] The newpaper, which published an accompanying editorial to explain why Trump must be stopped compared the GOP front runner to a dictator: If Trump were a politician running such […]

SUNDAY SMACK: IS THIS GRATITUDE?

This week’s Sunday Smack draws from some personal family experience — or more specifically, that of my Grandmother on Dad’s side of the family. Everyone in the community called her “Mother.” Before Mother owned a candy store, she cleaned homes for a living. Mother had a client, a wealthy White woman, who considered Mother a […]