I pretty much only read The Root for one reason these days: my buddy’s Michael Arceneaux’s writing. Today he posted his thoughts on the lives of the two young boys who killed themselves after being bullied with homophobic taunts. Michael: I know all too well about kids going after anyone they suspect as gay or Read More
This afternoon, while on a Four Tops kick, I found and rocked their 1973 jam, “Ain’t No Woman (Like the One I Got).” If you know me at all, you know what’s coming next, right? Why, an examination of female rap’s credibility, of course! Because my musical interests always send me spiraling down some hip-hop Read More
slb wrote an essay on what being raised by a single mother (mis)taught her about the male-female dynamic. Matriarchy, she said, taught her not to invest fully in men. Conversely, a matriarchal upbringing taught one of the men she dated to rely too heavily on her. Her piece read like a blanket statement with which Read More
Last week ari re-posted a smart blog entry on the Santa-fication of MLK, whose rough edges had been made smooth in our civic memory. He was despised while he was living, and his stances also confounded other leaders in the Civil Rights Movement, but little of that makes it into school textbooks. Rosa Parks has Read More
Sybil poses the question: The writing and directing and score and costuming awards we can think of as awarding a discreet skill. But performativity, as I figure it, is so inextricably linked to gender that we can’t think of ways to compare performances across those lines. I admit it’s hard for me to conceive, because Read More
There’s no real redeeming journalistic value in the NYT’s Sunday Styles section. It’s a catalogue of overachiever nuptials and trend stories, most of which don’t hold up to the slightest scrutiny. A lot of the time it’s dumb fun. But other times, it seems to exists solely for the purpose of making you roll your Read More
Tyler Perry is set release a film version of his play, Madea Goes to Jail, which I happened to watch with my family back home in Nashville over the Christmas holiday. TP flicks are best enjoyed as a community, because as you’re responding to your mother’s giggles about Madea’s swinging bosom, you can forget about Read More
Penelope Trunk tries to figure out why it is that educated women get more head. Her editor said the link is “coincidental, not causal,” as women who are more educated are also more self-confident and thus more likely to ask. Megan has some ideas. …I think it’s worth noting that societies that allow and even Read More
via our homie black scientist: Negronormative (nē’grō nôr’mə-tĭv)adj. Of, or relating to the view that blackness is a Christian, male, patriarchal, heterosexual entity. Often marginalizes expressions of black identity that do not fit into this mold by perpetuating it as natural and standard. Most commonly used to refer to an individual’s beliefs or actions: The Read More
