The Night Everything Changed On August 13, 1990, Curtis Mayfield walked onto an outdoor stage at Wingate Field in Brooklyn expecting to do what he had done for decades. He was forty-eight years old, still performing and creating music, with a voice people recognized the moment they heard it. Then the weather turned dangerous, and
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A Claim That Made Me Stop and Think I recently came across a claim that made me stop because it described racism in a way I had never heard before. The speaker said researchers had studied the brain waves of racist white men and women and discovered patterns resembling addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The idea
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That Strange Moment With AI If you have spent enough time talking with an artificial intelligence system, you may have experienced a moment that made you sit back and say, “Hold on now, where did that come from?” You ask what seems like a simple question, and suddenly the AI introduces a philosophy, historical connection,
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The Campaign Against Martin Luther King Jr. The more I learn about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the more I realize that his struggle went far beyond marches, speeches, and street demonstrations. Behind the scenes, the federal government was watching him with an intensity that should trouble anybody who values freedom. FBI Director J. Edgar
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What Are You Looking for in an Employer? There is one interview question that sounds simple, but I have come to see that it can reveal a whole lot about both the applicant and the employer. The interviewer may ask, “What are you looking for in an employer?” or “What would your ideal company be
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Reparations Are About More Than a Check Whenever reparations for Black Americans come up, the conversation can get heated before anybody has clearly defined what reparations would actually mean. Some people immediately imagine the government handing every Black person a large check and calling the matter settled. I think the subject is much deeper than
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What Younger Generations Were Taught About Racism A lot of younger Americans grew up understanding racism differently from the generations that came before them. They learned about slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement mostly through textbooks, documentaries, museums, and classroom discussions. Those lessons taught them about the struggles Black Americans had faced
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The Lesson Behind Shaka Zulu When I think about Shaka Zulu, I see more than the familiar story of a powerful African warrior king. I see a complicated lesson about leadership, institution building, succession, and what happens when too much power becomes concentrated in one person. Shaka was born around 1787 in what is now
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We Did Not Always Know What We Were Sitting On I have often thought about what happens when Black neighborhoods that were once dismissed suddenly become some of the most expensive places in a city. Families may have lived there for generations without realizing how valuable that location could eventually become. The houses might have
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Interviews Are About Value, Not Fancy Words I have learned that a job interview is not really a contest to see who can use the biggest words. The employer is trying to determine whether the person sitting across the table can solve problems and contribute to the organization. A candidate can have an impressive résumé
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