Uptown Notes

Note: This is a Partner Post to Haiti in Context: Voices. Please check out both. They represent some of the […]

I write this post with a heavy heart for the people of Haiti and its Diaspora. As you likely well know by now Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital was hit with a 7.0 earthquake and many sizable aftershocks. Given that Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere, the consequences of this “natural disaster” are far beyond what many of us can conceive. I see this as a time for us to join in support in spiritual, emotional, physical and economic ways. I’ve outlined some ways for you to help us do this.

And one of them is not the use of the word Negro which has BEEN appearing, including on the 2000 […]

This is my reflection on the principle of Ujamaa – Cooperative Economics… The title of the post is a variation […]

This is my reflection on Umoja, the first principle of Nguzo Saba of Kwanzaa… Does it make sense that fighting […]

A year ago, I began a series on Kwanzaa, this year I will finish it (thanks to all who remember […]

A year ago, I did a tribute post to the late Fred Hampton on Uptownnotes.com and one year later I […]

I am an African-American man. I am a heterosexual man. I am a middle-class man. These three statements are the […]

For the past few weeks I’ve remained unsettled by the videotape of Derrion Albert’s death at the hands of Black youth in Chicago. Like many, I avoided the tape for days on end, only to finally watch it in horror, with pain, and without direct recourse. This feeling of paralysis that many of us have felt is not one that is new to our community, whether it was the viewing of Emmett Till’s body in Jet or the railroading of the Central Park Five, the loss and defilement of Black male life at the hands of those Black, White or other remains sickening.

We, the concerned, the tired, and the committed have a rare opportunity to join not just in frustration, but in production. This week, at the Think Tank for African American Progress' meeting in Memphis, Tennessee entitled: "What is the future of Black Boys?" While the media, and by admission in many of our community, suggest there is little being done to combat the conditions that black male youth face, there is work, there is opportunity, and there is the need for your voice and energy.

Hip-Hop has been political, you just haven’t been paying it attention. My reflection on the Black August Hip-Hop Project.