they ask me to remember but they want me to remember their memories and i keep on remembering mine ~Lucille Clifton, “why some people be mad at me sometimes,” from Blessing the Boats, New and Selected Poems 1988-2000 Isn’t that always the case? Isn’t that half our problem each time we try to talk to [...]

Chapter 5 of Margaret Walker’s Jubilee could be read on its own as an essay. It carries some of the narrative threads of the novel, but it also offers a history lesson as well as a sociology lesson in addressing the issue of why so much conflict existed between black slaves and their poor white [...]

The “Black Jesus” episode of Good Times is one of my most memorable childhood television experiences. It ranks right up there with the Pearl Harbor episode of The Waltons for TV that taught me something. The White Jesus on the wall is the same one that adorned every church I ever entered as a child. [...]

I grew up cash poor and opportunity rich.  Maybe you won’t even know what I mean unless you too grew up in this way.  Some people are born poor without anything to offset the mental and physical impact of deprivation.  Others, like me, grow up with all they really need to thrive despite never having [...]

Socrates might have us believe that the unexamined life is not worth living, but plenty goes unexamined in this life.  Or maybe we know it is there, and we look at it from time to time, but we’d rather not.  We’d rather not see the clutter in our own houses.  We have other things on [...]