Uptown Notes

Recently, a firestorm surrounding Shirley Sherrod erupted. A spliced video of her speech ended in her force resignation from the USDA and condemnation by the NAACP. Following the debacle, there were multiple editorials and comments about the failures of the NAACP. While I completely agree the NAACP and USDA failed to respond appropriately to Sherrod, I don’t think the picture that has been painted of the NAACP is accurate or contemporary. Beneath I offer some reasons why and what it means for movement building.

Let me get it out of the way: I wasn’t the biggest fan of Pac’s music. I am the dude [...]

On February 10th, I had the pleasure of joining an esteemed set of scholars for the 143rd Founder’s Day Symposium [...]

“History is not a procession of illustrious people. It’s about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is [...]

And one of them is not the use of the word Negro which has BEEN appearing, including on the 2000 [...]

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

This is my reflection on Nia Purpose ”To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order [...]

This is my reflection on the principle of Ujamaa – Cooperative Economics… The title of the post is a variation [...]

To me, the situation of urban education is much like the common cold, as technology advances, we find more and more options that tend to abate sickness, cover the symptoms, but still there is no cure. The biggest confusion that I see emerging around urban education is the highlight of a few successful schools in a city and mistaking that as the probable, that is what will likely happen, in the city as the whole.

I just watched Precious, Lee Daniel’s film based on the novel Push by Sapphire, and the only way I can find to describe it is extraordinary in the superlative and literal sense. Extraordinary, in the superlative sense, for its craftsmanship in visually and textually telling a narrative of the composite character Precious. It is extra-ordinary (beyond ordinary), in the literal sense, in that it concentrates on a particular set of lives ravished by sexual abuse, physical abuse, and poverty. This is not the tale of all in poverty, but it is a tale that exists.