The Hip Hop Anthropologist

There has and will always remain an entrenched racist segment of the country, a bitter residue that will linger long after we emerge from whatever new configuration defines us following the current civil conflict. Yet, to distill the failure of the last election down to merely "racism" or the suitability of the candidates like Kamala Harris or Joe Biden is a profound, self-indulgent lie perpetuated by a segment of the Democratic base—the so-called silly ass liberals. They cling to this comforting narrative because it absolves them of the need for difficult action, allowing them to remain comfortably nestled within a failed political structure. The bitter, unvarnished truth, which they willfully ignore, is that the election was allegedly rigged, lock, stock, and barrel. By the brain-dead comic carnival barker, aka Klueless the Klown's own admission, and in light of the highly suspicious involvement of figures like Elon Musk, the evidence points to a massive operation to li...

The bane of my existence is Black folks who want to play by rules that were not either meant or written for them because they have personally benefited by their duplicity, not because they hold deeply held convictions about ethics, morality, the rule of law, or fair play. Working in Corporate Anywhere is a disputation of one's own values. Rationalizing it by saying, it is not how I act in my personal life is further evidence of this caustic erosion. So bragging rights because you may never have been arrested, seen the inside of a police car, station or court is meaningless if you approved the denial of a meritorious health claim, auto loan or mortgage, occupational licensure, rent application, job, admissions or financial aid application because "those are the rules." Congratulations. You played yourself. And you are an active participant in the oppression of your own people; your moral relativity is not merely hypocritical but a betrayal of universal laws—norms and mores...

 https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/sean-combs-prison-sentence-personal-letter-1235439918/ How much time is Sean Combs going to be sentenced to? No less than five years, but probably eight. No one in the history of the U.S. has gotten more time for being so stupid. He wanted to play a thug in real life, threatening rivals, intimidating competitors, assaulting enemies, and beating up girls. He had every opportunity to straighten up and fly right. But from his time with Jennifer Lopez shooting up a club—that one of his flunkies took the fall for—this mfer has been a nightmare. I mean the sheer, unmitigated hubris to think that nobody is watching a wealthy, high-profile cat like this, f***ing boys and girls, wrecking shop and careers, and then expect to get away with that sh** by turning himself in. He had to suspect those white folks were going to dig in that ass. If he didn't, he's stupider than I thought. Bottom line is, if he had any sense, that mfer should have tak...

 The podium at the United Nations, once a sanctum for statesmanship and sober reckoning, groaned pitifully beneath the weight of a bloated comic carnival barker in a baggy suit, flapping like an elderly circus seal for over fifty minutes. What was once a crucible for global consensus had been hijacked by a deranged ringmaster who mistook belligerence for strength, applause for legitimacy. The scaffolding of international alliances—delicate, deliberate, hard-won—was treated like stage décor, minus the cheap, gaudy, and fake Home Depot gold, for a soliloquy of self-congratulation, absent the blueprints of shared humanity; replaced by the crude etchings of grievance and vanity. It was not diplomacy; it was demolition dressed down in patriot drag, debased into a ledger of petty vendettas and theatrical chest-thumping. The world did not lean in to listen—it sat stunned, bracing for the next verbal Molotov hurled from a pulpit now repurposed as a bully’s balcony. The orange-tinged face o...

 I am a man. I’ve been a man for a long time. I’m also an intellectual. I was a precocious child. For a while, I was a thug. Some would argue—incorrectly—I still am. I’m a martial artist. Not gifted or polished. But I know what I know. I can apply those skill sets in a street self-defense situation with little effort. So those who know that part of my background would call me an intelligent thug. But like most folks, I’m more than the sum of my parts. And yet—I’m scared. Not of people. Not of violence. Not of hardship. I’ve never been scared of anyone or anything in my life. But I see the precursors of something we’ve never faced before in this country. I see thoughtful, highly educated people defending a common criminal, conflating loyalty with legitimacy, and rationalizing the erosion of constitutional guardrails. What’s forming isn’t just conflict—it’s total collapse. And before we even get to that point, we need to confront what’s already happened. A high court, scared out of i...

Many years ago, a close friend of mine with an MSW—a retired spokesperson for a social service agency in New York—shared with me her biographical experiences at a historically Black college and university (HBCU) in North Carolina, where she had secured employment shortly after relocating to be closer to her aging mother. Her move was motivated by family (her brother was also down there), but also by a desire to remain professionally engaged in a region that, at least on the surface, seemed to offer cultural familiarity and institutional alignment with her values. What she found, however, was a deeply entrenched system of tribalism—one that operated not through overt hostility, but through subtle codes of exclusion, status maintenance, and territorial behavior. I listened carefully to her account, not merely as a friend but as an astute student of both human and group dynamics. Her experience mirrored my own recent encounters at two separate HBCUs in Maryland (albeit years apart), where...

There’s a distinct pattern here—one that’s too consistent to be a coincidence. Every time Black Americans begin to substantively integrate a profession, the rules change. The bar gets raised. The hoops multiply. The gatekeepers get busy. And now, in a twist that feels both familiar and insidious, we’re witnessing a new wave: the push to remove college degrees as a requirement for federal jobs, especially in law enforcement starting with the premier law enforcement agency in the country, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is quietly dropping its four-year college degree requirement while scaling back its academy from sixteen to eight weeks. It’s being sold as reform, as inclusion but not the DEI type, as a way to broaden the applicant pool. But peel back the banana, the rhetoric, and what you find is a race (pun intended) to the bottom—a calculated effort to devalue the very credentials Black folks fought tooth and nail to earn. Let’s be clear: this isn’t about merit. It’s...

Unc is sitting here. That’s the thought that settles in as the blue light from the laptop cuts through the dark like a quiet lighthouse. I’m surfing the web, as I often do, sipping cheap brandy and chasing it with a Miller High Life. The High Life isn’t mine, not really—it’s a ritual, a nod to Percy Jarvis, Sr., my father. His drink was Cutty Sark, but this bottle, this pop of the cap, feels like communion. If I had my way, it’d be a Ballantine Ale and a blunt. But tonight, this is the sacrament. There’s a myth—persistent and shallow—that solitude equals loneliness. That a man alone in a room lit only by a screen is somehow incomplete. But this room isn’t empty. It’s dense. It’s thick with memory, with choices, with the kind of peace that only comes when you’ve made your peace with yourself. I could date. I could dance that dance again. But my interest lies elsewhere—in reflection, in legacy, in the quiet clarity that comes when the noise fades. My son is my anchor. My l...

    Social and behavioral scientists may not recite a Hippocratic Oath, but their ethical compass points unmistakably toward a duty to prevent harm. Their mandate is not merely academic—it is moral, civic, and urgent. Like psychologists who are legally bound to report suicidal or homicidal ideation, social scientists are ethically compelled to sound the alarm when societal structures begin to fracture.    This responsibility transcends the ivory tower. It demands that scholars engage with the world as it is—messy, polarized, unequal—and use their tools of inquiry to illuminate paths away from harm. Whether analyzing the corrosive effects of disinformation, the widening chasm of economic disparity, or the erosion of democratic norms, their findings must be communicated not just to peers, but to the public, policymakers, and communities who stand to suffer the consequences of inaction.    Du Bois and the Moral Imperative of Applied Sociology   ...

 Seeking a literary agent for my finished urban thriller, Do or Die . This 80,000-word manuscript is a timely, high-stakes story of a family caught in a desperate war against gentrification in Brooklyn. A detective investigates a series of professional homicides, only to discover the culprits are led by a man her brother trains under—a charismatic figurehead of a militant group. The siblings are pulled to opposing sides of a violent battle for their community's soul, leading to a brutal and unresolved climax. This novel is a social thriller that delivers both pulse-pounding action and a powerful exploration of community, family, and a city on the brink. #LiteraryAgent #AgentSearch #UrbanThriller #SocialThriller #AmQuerying #WritingCommunity #DebutNovel

  By Dennis Shipman  Th ere's a brutal, undeniable truth echoing across the American landscape, a truth that cuts deeper than any political pundit dares to admit: the only thing Trumpty Dumpty got right was saying we're a stupid country, because we are. Not because of a lack of intelligence in our individuals, but because a pervasive, self-destructive racism has blinded a significant portion of the electorate, leading them to vote against their own material well-being in a grotesque theater of racial spite. This isn't theory; it's the daily lived reality for millions, and a pathology that threatens to be the ultimate undoing of this nation. We are witnessing, in stark and horrifying clarity, how white citizens will vote to perpetuate white supremacy anywhere in the world, no matter the cost to themselves. They will vote for policies that cause their own families to suffer, to starve, to go without healthcare, housing, or other basic needs. Why? Just to deprive those ...

By Dennis Shipman In the annals of American jurisprudence, few decisions cast as dark and enduring a shadow as Dred Scott v. Sandford (60 U.S. 393, 1857). This ignominious ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States, under Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, declared that African Americans, whether enslaved or free, could not be citizens and thus possessed no rights that a white man was bound to respect. It was a judicial act of profound dehumanization, a stark embodiment of white supremacy wielded not by brute force, but by the very institution charged with upholding justice. Fast forward to the present, and a chilling echo reverberates through the hallowed halls of power. The Supreme Court of the United States, particularly its current conservative majority—what can only be called the Clarence "Uncle Tom" Ass Supreme Court (Chief Justice John Roberts)—has increasingly rendered decisions that, while cloaked in the language of constitutional interpretation and original intent,...