Wednesday 23 May 2012
Legendary television journalist Gil Noble, passed to the other side April 5. And as producer and host of the beloved Like It Is, he took with him an awareness and love of the African Diaspora that I do not expect to see on mainstream television again. Gil Noble was not in pursuit of the...
Listening to Trayvon Martin’s extended terrorized screams for help that can be heard in the background of a 911 caller, as Zimmerman tracked him and cornered him, or Ramarley Graham cowering in a corner of the bathroom while a policeman stood and shot him, made real the understanding that even now, in 2012, an...
When we look at President Barack Obama, it is easy to forget that he does not share the psycho-social heritage of the descendents of chattel slavery and that he was raised by white folks. And while there is nothing wrong with that, his mother was an extraordinary woman herself, it does mean that his...
It may not be politically correct, but one of the best things to happen to Brooklyn in the past ten years is the Atlantic Yards project. I mention this because last week I was at the Atlantic Terminal Mall, where from a lunch counter stool on the second floor, one looks out of a...
Getting the Energy Up for Another School Year If you’re a parent of a New York City School student and recognize the danger our children are in locked into a system where they’re required by law to attend schools whose failure is not based on test results but the growing threat on principals and...
As a reporter who’s covered my share of perp walks, I kind of enjoyed watching 62-year-old Frenchman Dominique Strauss-Kahn shackled and haggard-looking being led away to the hoosegow. DSK, as he has been labeled, got his moment in the American justice system sun, where in the public eye, he was guilty-looking enough to...
Like any other resident, I love New York and consider it the center of the world, but I never could get its hoity-toity attitude towards its sports legends. Go to Detroit and they have two great statues of homegrown boxing legend Joe Louis. Go to Chicago and there is a first-rate statue of...
Watching the yearly New York City budget process unfold under the Bloomberg Administration is a lot like watching a soap opera that somehow always has a happy ending. Such is the case of last week’s $66 billion spending plan that Bloomberg and the City Council hammered out last week. Leading up to the agreement,...
When I was a child watching movies, it was the Mau Mau who were the villains and the white colonialists who were portrayed as the good guys. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that the Mau Mau were freedom fighters and it was the opposite that was true. Now we have President...
As the 20th Anniversary of the Crown Heights riots between blacks and Jews comes this summer, it is worth noting that since biblical times mainstream Judaism has had a strong contingent of black folk among them. They are the Ethiopian Jews that trace their roots to the days when Moses led a band...
