Uptown Notes

Recently, I penned a piece discussing the need for Black folks to join in with the fight against Arizona’s racist immigration […]

The term racial profiling has been part of my vocabulary and reality for nearly 15 years now, but it shouldn’t […]

I love hip-hop, love some reggaetón too, I love the youth, but I’m pretty sure I don’t love this! How […]

“History is not a procession of illustrious people. It’s about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is […]

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.

On Tuesday, the New York Times published a story entitled “As Population Shifts in Harlem, Blacks Lose Their Majority.” The […]

This is my reflection on Kuumba: Creativity I have to admit, I never really remember reading the “official definition” of […]

Dear Old Morehouse,

I’ve been trying to avoid writing this for some time now. As an alumnus of the institution, it’s hard for me to see you in such condition. Many of my fellow alumni complained of your disrepair and your besmirched image when they heard about students being beaten for their sexuality, shooters graduating, and cross-dressing, but I have got bigger concerns. While all these things mattered to me, they did not disturb me because of what was being done to the image of our institution, they disturbed me because they demonstrated that Dear Old Morehouse was terribly unequipped to deal with the realities and lives that Black men in America live now. In fact, it is the Old Morehouse that is more dangerous to me than any student with a gun, sagged pants, or high heels would ever be to me. Let me explain.

So for the past few years I’ve been jousting with my family and loved ones around the issue of same […]