Category: Free the Jackson Five

In Porgy and Bess, caddish Sportin’ Life lures Bess from virtuous Porgy by crooning “the things that you’re liable to read in the Bible, well, it ain’t necessarily so.” Sportin’ Life could just as easily have been talking about the assumption that most men make—that their children are really their children. Many times, well, it…

Just like a three-year-old defiantly staring down a plate of overcooked Brussels sprouts, I told the world I was not going to write about race stuff this month. I even promised my 16-year-old son that no matter what, I was not going to be The Rake’s resident “spook by the door,” spewing endlessly about skin…

Ella Fitzgerald used to sing a tune that said, “I’m putting all my eggs in one basket…I’m betting everything I’ve got on you.” This may be great advice for the love game, but it’s a lousy way to play politics. If you put everything in one political basket, as African Americans in this state have…

If you mix blue paint with yellow paint, you get green paint. If a Finn and an Indonesian “get together,” as my teenage boys would say, a child produced by that union would be Finnish-Indonesian. However, in our race-warped culture, when a black person and a white person produce a baby, something different happens. The…

According to African-American comedienne Moms Mabley, “If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” Sounds like Moms could have been talking about conditions leading up to this past August melee in north Minneapolis. Once again, primarily white cops, who mostly live outside Minneapolis, confronted primarily black people…

In life, where you stand very often depends on where you sit. And when it comes to the police, I have usually taken the stand that they have to be monitored very closely, especially when it come to relationships with black and brown people. I have a lot of personal and collective history that bred…