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The George Floyd Janga
George Floyd is dead. No amount of memorials, court cases, T-shirts with his face, Ad Council-sponsored commercials, candlelight vigils, social media hashtags, street activism, presidential camera op meetings, or high-minded speeches about the need for police reform changes that fact. I don’t like to use the word anniversary when it comes to George Floyd. The…
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Breaking the Bernie Sanders Bubble
There are five stages of grief, political or otherwise. This occurred when Black voters decimated him in South Carolina, turning the tables on a campaign that was riding high from winning Iowa and New Hampshire, two overwhelmingly white states with the total population of Brooklyn and Queens. Of course, no one should have believed in…
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In the Age of Trump…the Future Is Cloudy
In the Age of Trump, you can’t help be pessimistic about the future. There’s something nasty about this new age. A nastiness—even when we kick that cheating bastard out of office—that will cling to us black folks like a sweaty, funky shirt. Trump’s racism, xenophobia, and general stupidity are leaking into the genius of Blackness.…
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America the Beautiful, America the Cruel
The Fourth of July, or the Fourth of You Lie as we black folks like to call it, is here again. And we’ll be inundated with bold-faced lies about American exceptionalism. You’ll hear it from television commentators. From politicians. From dudes wearing a red, white and blue t-shirt…made in China. They’ll talk about how we’re…
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To Live and Die in South L.A.
It’s important for people to understand why it’s OK for Nipsey Hussle to be seen as a hero in South Los Angeles. But we have to get a few things straight. Don’t get distracted by the fact that he was a Rollin’ 60s Crip; people join gangs because they seek a sense of community in…
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Here's 10 Black-Ass Predictions to Consider Since No One Really Knows What the Hell is Going to Happen in 2019
When it comes to predicting the future, I tend to listen to the wisdom of the black women in my family. Grandmamas, mothers, aunts, play aunts, doesn’t matter, their dreams are damn near unassailable when it comes to predicting your impending future death. (“Baby, I saw you on a train headed straight towards a mountain.…
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What Does It Mean to Have a ‘Gentrified’ Martin Luther King Jr. When Some Blacks Are the Gentrifiers?
My first real experience with the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. happened in 1980, just 12 years after his tragic assassination in Memphis, Tenn. I was a 14-year-old freshman at Loyola High School, a prestigious Jesuit all-boys school in Los Angeles built on the philosophy that rigorous academic training would produce the next generation…
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#TheRootTrip: The Great American Ice Experiment
Willie Wardell owns the Mighty Midget Mart Shell gas station, located at 4936 Albemarle Road in Charlotte, N.C., and he’s been in the convenience store business for the past 40 years. His store has everything that other gas stations in the neighborhood have, and he makes sure to price things competitively. But when I started…
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#TheRootTrip: Treat Yo’ Self at Atlanta’s Iwi Fresh Garden Day Spa
I wanna make this clear: Iwi Fresh Garden Day Spa at 341 Nelson St. SW in Atlanta is one of the best black-owned businesses I’ve ever visited. Point blank. What makes it the best? A number of things. Owner Yolanda Owens is a cool and beautiful sister (Alpha Kappa Alpha member, by the way) who’s…
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#TheRootTrip: A Former Tourist Home in SC Has Literally Gone to the (Dead) Dogs
Yeah, so lemme tell you about my trip to Greenville, S.C. My task was to find the Dr. Gibbs Tourist Home, located at 914 Anderson Road, and I was excited because I thought that if this person was a doctor, I was pretty sure that he or she would have a pretty impressive home that…
