"Take a load off, Annie/ take a load for free/ take a load off, Annie, and you put the load right on me" -- "The Weight," Robbie Robertson My bedroom is the center of my life. Because of what g  

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