Uptown Notes

Yesterday, protests at Ground Zero continued to gain international attention. What’s at issue is a figment of the American public’s imagination: the ground zero mosque. Herds of “well-intentioned” Americans flooded lower manhattan to chant down the construction of what they are calling a ground zero mosque, but what really is an Islamic community center. This case is a powerful lesson in framing, which I was first introduced to by the George Lakoff but you and I experience constantly. If we want to make sure The Community Center at Park 51 is built, we’ve got to re-frame the conversation, or else the Islamophobes have won!

This is my reflection on Imani: Faith… Faith is often thought of in a religious and spiritual way. Having grown [...]

It’s been a minute since I dropped a Friday Funny on ya’ll, probably because I’ve been traveling the Diaspora for [...]

Times are tough but thankfully the iphone is providing some relief. Here’s a brotha who takes Falling Down to a [...]

So one of the problems with being a sociologist of race and offering public commentary is it sometimes creates the [...]

We here at Uptown Notes are very much in accord with the African belief of respecting one’s elders and are [...]

Do you know some Black birthers? I bet you do!

Here is a hilarious edition of This Week in Blackness by Elon James White. This week’s BET awards were … [...]

We remain in a moment where people are beginning to realize that the election of Barack Obama does not mean a Black political agenda, one in which race is central, will continue to be pushed into the public sphere. So the question becomes, who advances the concerns of the faces at the bottom of the well?

This is sssssssooooooo ignant and ssssssoooooo wrong, but I really did laugh out loud!