“White” is not the new black, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real

Just finished a really excellent discussion of whiteness in the New Yorker. I’m just all aflutter at how great it is…Should I tell you all what I liked or just urge you to go read it for yourself? Maybe I’ll leave you with Kelefa Sanneh’s conclusion and encourage you again to go read it and [...]

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Dude, history messes wid ur mind.

update to the update: And then of course there’s the 10 dollar t-shirt sale TOMORROW cause of their anniversary! (actually today, Thurs, since most of you will read it on Thurs) Been living with the same four basic t-shirts for about four months now and thinking about shopping. Got all excited by this cool website [...]

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Remarkable

Sometimes I think we are in the same era as my period (1920-1940) and then I hear something like this, on the New Yorker Out Loud podcast: I think, that, sometimes it is very important to take stock of a historical movement. I can think of no historical movement in American history that is more [...]

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sleeeeeepy

Went caffeine free for several years, but finally broke down recently b/c caffeinated drinks just taste better. Like any addict I said, I can start again without getting hooked. Why then am I so damn sleepy if I don’t have any coffee or tea in the morning now? (I perfer tea-time in the afternoon. I’m [...]

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Eva B. Dykes

updated again: Found new picture of Eva Dykes. Amherst has uploaded a huge number of photographs from Du Bois’ Crisis and Personal files. It’s great. 3-19-2010 updated: Added a link to the edition of The Crisis on google books in which the picture of Dykes appears. 2/14/2010 Three black women received their Ph.D.s in 1921, [...]

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Jim Crow was not about inertia

Anybody who thinks that Jim Crow was maintained by the inertia of tradition doesn’t realize how much effort was put in to maintain it all the time, by average folks (though that is not to say that there wasn’t a lot of cooperation on both sides of the racial line). For example, something I just [...]

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The world is interesting, and that’s enough for me.

See here’s my problem. I secretly want to be a New Yorker author. There’s this wonderful article on Neil Gaiman (one of my favorite sci fi/fantasy/modern novel authors) in a recent issue. It is saying all these important things, but subtlety, without a “thesis” per se. It includes crazy things about the author’s life as [...]

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Haitian History

I saw someone got to my blog by googling history of Haitian involvement in the U.S. It’s still a tiny bit weird to me that people might read this who don’t know me, and yet exciting. Garrison Keillor once gave the advice to a budding writer to just write and write if that is what [...]

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