The Hip Hop Anthropologist

...this is an outrageous miscarriage of justice ... ...and if the system  worked for blacks equally, the Judge would have immediately set aside the verdict in the interest of justice... you simply cannot condemn a  promising young man with absolutely no previous criminal involvement to  prison for 12-years; and, brand him with a lifetime sexual predator label when he's only 20-years old! And only had a consensual, (if ill-advised) make-out session with a 17-year-old, which is the age of consent in virtually every state of the union. That white jury didn't see him as anything other than an archetypal, hypersexual beast defiling a virtuous, little, young, corn-fed, alabaster beauty. Beauty and the beast. The King  Kong metaphor played out in a cramped courtroom surrounded by flat plains filled with endless cornfields in the heart[less]land of  America... Welcome to Kansas... After all, it was the scene of the infamous Scopes "Monkey" trial back in the day. Forget Evolu

A cultural shift has begun in this country with respect to criminal justice policy generally and policing particularly as Ferguson Police Department has become the latest poster child in a long awaited campaign to out rogue law enforcement agencies for unfair extra-judicial processes and procedures that have had catastrophic consequences for those persons of color unfortunate enough to get caught up in “the system.” Unwarranted [pun intended] police contact is a dark portal through which many unwary, law abiding Blacks enter into a hostile, racist and patently unfair criminal justice system. To those brothas and, to a lesser degree, sistas suffering the indignity of false arrest is not the end but very often beginning of an insult that always has unforeseen collateral consequences. Those overcharged for minor often non-criminal offenses, like misdemeanor traffic infractions, possession of small amounts of marijuana, or other “quality of life” violations, these “criminal justice”

                                                                            Us Black Folks                                                                         By Dennis Shipman    Unlike any other ethnic group or, more accurately, sub-group in the United States, upwardly mobile Black folks have been all too willing to sacrifice cultural affinity on the self-serving altar of rugged individualism than any other group on earth. Individualism is a concept that does not exist among any indigenous group found in Africa. Social scientists often argue, only to be cast as apologists for tribalism, that this phenomenon is a lasting vestige of slavery.    Communalism is a philosophy that binds Africans however tenuously to the whole but often gives rise to a dichotomy, which fuels frustration many conscious blacks in the progressive movement feel at an entrenched, intransigent segment of our community. A segment that openly fosters an unapologetic I-got-mine-you-get-yours ethos. It is a pecul