It is helpful to study other Black cultures in a comparative sense. No, I am not talking about learning a foreign language — as comparative studies are traditionally taught in the academy. I am talking about looking at the colonial situation throughout various points of the African Diaspora, and comparing those attempts to colonize gender divisions to African Americans.

One of the thorniest points in researching and presenting my book to potential publishers was how I classified African Americans. Let me just tell you, that my classification of African Americans alongside other, formerly-colonized Black populations garnered me raised eyebrows from colleagues, SCATHING rejections from several academic publishing houses, and laughter from seasoned academics. African Americans, they all said, have never been colonized. And the African American experience is an exceptional, unique experience. …

While we hear political pundits talk about the mythical “angry white voter” or Trump supporter, we never hear about why these white folk are angry. What we are living through is a type of American language that does not line up with American history or its current present.

When I last posted, I talked about cookbooks and synonyms. As an English doc/professor/nerd, there are times when I am going to pay close attention to the language. As a reader of this blog, there are times when you have run across a number of my typos. I am accustomed to writing EVERYTHING on a legal pad first, then typing them. Yes, I love handwriting and paper and ink and inkpens and markers and calligraphy and even those feather tip deals that you see when you watch Restoration/Victorian era pieces and sealing wax. There is nothing more beautiful than classic cursive in a fine tip pen! So, drafting totally on the computer is a new experience for me and I am not as mindful of my words and letters when I am typing as when I see the letters flow from my pencil/pen and onto the yellow pages of my legal pad. …

My mad obsession with old cookbooks taught me that Black people are not monolithic.

I have a confession: I LOVE COOKBOOKS! Whenever I can get my hands on an old cookbook, I simply cannot pass it up! For me, the older the better. Let me see an African American cookbook from the late 1800s and I get all giddy on the inside. I quickly grab it, flip through the pages, cruise all of the recipes, laugh at the little folk sayings, and find secret joy after secret joy. Words like “teacup full” or “whip batter 30 times” gives me a school girl’s pleasure beyond my ability to measure. The cookbook that you see is a beautifully laid-out annotated bibliography by Toni Tipton-Martin. It is now available on amazon.com. I do not know the author personally, but I want to thank her for putting this together, for creating an annotated bibliography, and for delivering a piece of artwork all at the same time! If you have a cookbook fanatic in your family, please do not hesitate to order this book! She has a second publication, too! …

I do not own the copyright to the music below. I used it in my class this previous semester in lecture. The conventional criticism and writing about RAP are that it is nihilistic, misogynistic, and materialistic with no spiritual backbone. But RAP has always had a spiritual backbone and has always been globally influenced while being a global influencer. Like Blues, it was the music of po’ folk, so it has traditionally been marginalized popularly and academically and its spiritual contributions have been unacknowledged while its cultural contributions have been outright dismissed.

I have just wrapped up one of the most exhausting semesters of my teaching life. It began virtually, went to hybrid, then finished virtually due to unending positive COVID-19 test results from my freshmen students. Thank goodness that the upperclassmen took better care of themselves and are no longer thrilled by campus parties — else the entire semester would have been dismal. …

In most cases, a certain segment of African Americans simply feel that Hip Hop artists have not “earned” the right to speak as African Americans for African Americans.

Each generation faces its challenges. Sometimes, natural disasters strike us with a ferocity that leaves us speechless in their wake. They come through without much warning, ripping and tearing with an almost personal touch. From hurricanes to tornados to wildfires, they break us down to that lowest common existential denominator of ourselves until we realize that those who play God were only playing — and we somehow always knew it. For that moment, black, white, rich, poor, man, woman, and child face the same fate. We humble ourselves and we know within the very fiber of our beings that we control nothing. There is a force out there somewhere larger than ourselves and that force is running things — not us. And every generation experiences this. None of us are immune to weather. …

The current controversy with Ice Cube, the Clinton debacle with Sister Souljah 30 years earlier, and the dismissive tone that academia takes with Hip Hop scholarship are long acts of continual high-handed dismissal of socio-economic, political activism Hip Hop artists and those who actively participate in Hip Hop culture. Sadly, this is nothing new.

In 1992, during the height of the Los Angeles riots, RAP recording artist and activist Sister Souljah (Lisa Williamson) was giving an interview in which she was trying to explain the mindset of the average gang member. Lisa Williamson, who grew up in public housing on welfare in New York and New Jersey, worked hard and eventually graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in American history and African studies. After graduating, she took a job working with the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice where she organized concerts for homeless children and families to attend six weeks of camps in North Carolina. She worked tirelessly crusading against the infamous “welfare hotels” that exploited African Americans and Black immigrants in New York. …

In an era when the nightly news brings yet another police murder of a Black man on television, it is more important than ever to listen to Black men speak about themselves. I feel so strongly about it, that I wrote a book that nobody cared about, that actually got me called “crazy” on more than one occasion, I almost self-published, and took 14 years to finish!

How do Black men speak about themselves? Do we know? Do we ask? When they do speak about themselves, do we listen? If we seriously listened to TuPac, would we get past the beat to hear his very serious political commentary, or brush him off as “angry” (as if a Black man is not entitled to anger)? If we listened to Stevie Wonder, would we hear his concern for the environment? Or just listen to the songs we heard on the radio growing up (as if a Black man can’t be concerned about the environment)? If we listened to Malcolm X, would we hear how he advocated for women and spoke against Northern-style racism, or would we reduce him to one quote (please don’t make me repeat it here)? …

In the spirit of Zora Neale Hurston

One of the most enraging, hurtful things that I experience in my career is to watch my Black academic colleagues write about, give conference papers on, and build their entire careers around the critical analysis of the writings of Zora Neale Hurston while they do not even acknowledge that a person like myself sits in the room. Do not get me wrong here: I know who I am. I do not clamor for external validation. I am a large brown woman from the Pine Belt of Mississippi who grew up in a Black world. My language is working class. My orientation toward life comes from a great and wise old bard by the name of James Brown, “I don’t want nobody to give me nothing. …