Students and faculty at Columbine High School staying home Tuesday to observe the five-year-old carnage wreaked by two geeks says, "We're here!" New time and day, same program. (Announcer: The stud
On last weekend's Saturday Night Live spoof of the 9/11 hearings, Janet Jackson did a better Condoleezza Rice than Rice herself, who did a far superior impression of Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth dur
Money is the new crack for America's monied black middle class. Settle yourselves. No one's begrudging the African-American (wo)man's green-eyed quest to validate the hyphenated American scheme. G
I've known my mother for 39 years, and I never thought we'd both get this far. We are humorously fatalistic. Pry us away from the contextual frame of our mother-daughter relationship and we'd still
My father is an old and emotionally brittle man convicted of gross sexual imposition for molesting young trusts. He spent 180 days in the Hamilton County Justice Center two years ago. Where he'll sp
It was the best of ads. It was the worst of ads. When I first laid four eyes on Hamilton County Commissioner John Dowlin's "attack ads" accusing Councilman Pat DeWine of "leaving his wife and childr
Black History Month is like fastening a rope around air. It's slave-catching. It's like embracing a cloud. It's the Middle Passage without rest stops. It's a failed survey of a ubiquitous civilizat
"Mammy: A term of insult. Never used in any other way by Negroes." -- Glossary of Harlem Slang, Zora Neale Hurston Every day I write the book. I'm forced to churn out pop 'n fresh chapters lik
"Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?" -- "Sinnerman," Nina Simone LaShawn Pettus-Brown's (LPB) Jan. 23 arrest opens a new chapter on the most intriguing manhunt for a runaway colored man since N
"Can you go get my gun for me so I can go lock up some niggers?" That's what I hear then-Sgt. Jeff Butler say -- tired, frustrated and angry -- at the videotaped tail end of a February 1999 Cinci
I was more surprised that The Cincinnati Enquirer even ran Boondocks than I was by the paper's Jan. 4 decision to pull the caustic black-themed comic strip. Pop goes the proverbial carrot before the
This waning year tasted like a medley of good fortune, hard work and opportunity wrapped in a floured tortilla shell of confusion, tragedy and war. I've never felt more adult than in 2003. I learn
I wish Joe could see me now. Whenever I brimmed over, he spoke my aspirations back to me without diminishing my excitement. Joe made it OK to be a black alien. That's because he was one. To be you
"White perceptions of Negroes, and the historical inculcation of these perceptions in the minds of Negroes themselves, are at the root of our present troubles." -- Black Rage by Grier and Cobbs Le
When Marvin Lewis first came to town, pro-Bengal bobble heads slathered on him responsibilities that had nothing to do with U-turning a losing football team. According to them, Lewis' blackness cam