“There Are No Black People in El Salvador” There is an old idea repeated in El Salvador that says, in one form or another, there are no Black people here. It gets said so casually that you might think the country simply came into the world that way. But once I started digging into the
The Black People El Salvador Learned Not to See Read More »
Words, Race, and Who Gets Corrected I came back to this subject because the way people judge Black speech has always stayed on my mind. Too often, the way Black people speak is treated as wrong simply because it sounds different from standard English. Some words and expressions have become strongly associated with Black culture
Black Words That Were Never Really Black Read More »
A Debt She Could Not Pay The year was 1902, near Dadeville, Alabama, and a Black woman named Sarah Neely found herself caught inside a system much bigger than the charge against her. Sarah was arrested for larceny, taken before the local mayor, convicted, and ordered to pay a fine. On paper, this may have
Sarah Neely: Freedom in Name Only Read More »
Suspicion Has a History Black people do not become suspicious every time something looks wrong because we are irrational. Sometimes suspicion grows out of history. That does not mean every suspicious death is a murder. It does not mean every official report is false. It does not mean every police department, medical examiner, sheriff, prosecutor,
Black Suspicion Did Not Begin on Social Media Read More »
The Photograph That Changes the Way You See Him There is an image of Earl Campbell later in life that is difficult to reconcile with the football player people remember. The man who once ran through NFL defenders needed a walker and sometimes a wheelchair just to move around. His hands had become so arthritic
Earl Campbell: The Tyler Rose and the Price of Running Through Everybody Read More »
A House Sitting Beside History There is a house in downtown Tampa that most people could probably drive past without understanding what they are looking at. It sits at 851 East Zack Street, only a short distance from Tampa Union Station. Today the building looks fragile, weathered, and in desperate need of restoration. During segregation,
The Jackson House: When Segregation Made a Tampa Home a Haven Read More »
The Problem With Putting Women on a Pedestal One of the biggest mistakes some men make is not that they think too little of women. It is that they think of women as something other than human. They put women on a pedestal. They imagine women are naturally more innocent, more moral, less sexual, less
Stop Idealizing Women and Start Seeing People Clearly Read More »
Before Michael Jackson Called, Teddy Riley Had Already Changed the Radio By the time Michael Jackson reached out to Teddy Riley, Riley was already a major force in R&B. In the late 1980s, he helped create New Jack Swing, a sound that blended hip-hop beats with R&B vocals, melodies, and harmonies. He had already helped
Teddy Riley: The Man Who Changed the Sound of R&B Read More »
I guess it is my turn. Like so many other people, I was laid off last week, and I am not going to pretend it did not shake me. I had already been thinking about retirement and what the next chapter of my life might look like. But there is a big difference between choosing
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Sometimes the Explanation Is Intentionally Short If you have ever been fired and walked away still wondering exactly why, you are not alone. Sometimes the explanation really is vague by design. An employer may say something like “performance,” “policy violation,” “not meeting expectations,” or simply “the company has decided to end your employment.” That can
Why Employers Sometimes Stay Vague When They Fire You Read More »