Friends
98
Life

If You Don’t Like Women, I Don’t Trust You

“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.” Madeleine Albright How many times have you heard another woman say: “I just don’t get along with other women.” “I don’t have any female friends.” Or the kicker, “I just don’t trust b*tches!” Throughout my life I’ve heard every iteration of my…

Mother and Daughter
18
opinion

Sex Talk And The Babies: Time To Get Real

That talk with your daughter about how she got here? Yeah, not the most anticipated of discussions. But the chat must happen, and it generally does, through three prisms. One is the abstinence-only approach. Discourage any sexual behavior short of marriage and espouse the virtue of patience for that “right one.” There would be noble…

Sunset
15
depression

Sometimes You Can Do All the Right Things …

It probably hit me yesterday when I was watching President Obama address reporters after the bill for strengthening background checks and closing loopholes failed in the Senate. All the sad, familiar faces behind him — either victims of gun violence or had lost a loved one to it, coupled with the round-the-clock, often incorrect reporting coming out…

DMX
68
DMX

The Fine Line Between Entertainment & Exploitation

I’ve always liked DMX’s persona. That, of course, comes with some qualifiers. I had to ignore the violent and misogynistic imagery in most of his lyrics, which I was much more willing to do in X’s heyday a decade ago, than now.  I liked his music, like it still, for the growling voice over Swizz…

President Obama and The Carters
47
Barack Obama

The Obamas and Carters: Much Ado

As the present becomes a relic, the Obamas and the Carters will be history’s odd couple. Before Barack Obama was the eye candy of the media and political magnet for black moms and grandmas everywhere, he wasn’t as easily received among black folks. It was due to a common ignorance shared in the black community…

Rand Paul
36
howard university

Rand Paul & the GOP: Searching for A Black Friend

Big week in conservative outreach to the black community! Rand Paul went to the Harvard of historical black colleges – Howard University – to school a roomful of already educated black students on how President Abraham Lincoln was a Republican and that all of the NAACP’s founders were Republicans. (Some were also white! And really light-skinned Negroes!!! And Ida B. Wells!!!!) Of course, all the students (and me and…