The Hip Hop Anthropologist

The unions voted overwhelmingly for this nut. Don't believe the hype or what their leadership is saying. You can hear the hollow echo of their paid endorsements bouncing off the walls of deserted factories across the rust belt, but the membership, the actual men and women with dirt under their fingernails and bills in their hands, they pulled the lever for him anyway. It’s a spectacular, nauseating display of manufactured consent masking genuine, deep-seated economic anxiety that was cynically exploited and then thoroughly betrayed. The leadership puts out statements about job protection and collective bargaining, yet their collective endorsement was nothing more than political stagecraft, a rubber stamp on a strategy of self-destruction. The rank and file fell for the spectacle, the bombast, the sheer, theatrical lie of the strongman act, and now the entire working class is left holding the empty bag, wondering where the hell the promised boom went. The man never built anything. T...

  I used to think social anxiety was a private wiring, something that lived inside a person and only occasionally flared in crowded rooms. Then I began to watch people I know—friends, younger cousins, former students—change shape under the pressure of life lived online. Their stories are not clinical case notes but small, living proofs of how connectivity can manufacture isolation. Miriam: The Curated Self Miriam built a life in public. Her feed was meticulous: staged mornings, witty captions, carefully edited triumphs. Off‑camera she was frayed. I remember sitting across from her at a café as she scrolled through her own hour‑old post and counted likes with the intensity of someone auditing their pulse. She described conversations that never happened because she had rehearsed them for an audience instead of a single listener. Her anxiety came from the mismatch between an exhausting, performative visibility and the quiet absence of true intimacy. She was visible to thousands and al...

I was making supper. While standing in the kitchen I mused about how the only freight forwarder who had responded to my shipping order says his American partner told him they do not handle "household goods" and "personal effects." I spent an awful lot of time in trucking to finance my work, education and research. 'Dey a lie...' immediately came to mind because even according to the overlapping national and international laws and treaties that govern shipping, household goods are not treated any more or less the value than the owner declared. In short, it ain't that deep. A rebuke of the energy trying to hinder me from packing up this apartment. Now like most Black folks and all educated ones, I speak colloquial English typically. But "code switch" back into the more comfortable Black English when among close acquaintances or perhaps family. I cannot ever recall using that exact phrase - ever. But I clearly recognized it having a Creole root. W...

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   ...

  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 ...

 DEI always has been a canard, a red herring; a race-based grievance by under performing, under educated white ethnics envious of the immense strides made by educated racial minorities, who achieved upward mobility white ethnics presumed was their birthright, in spite of the huge ball and chain Black folks carry on our way up the ladder to success. Trump's entire administration is riddled by and infected with photogenic, camera-ready mediocrities who could not collectively manage their way outta a wet paper bag. If their immigrant dad was a trade unionist, they were admitted to the craft, guild, or trade. If their parents attended a prestigious college or university, they received preferential admission treatment. There was no bar exam for lawyers in many states until Blacks began graduating from law school. No exam to practice psychology 'til '65. No tuition at public colleges. The retirement age used to be 65. Ronald Reagan changed it to 67 parring back and ...

  Ten Democrat senators broke voting for cloture advancing a draconian spending Republican bill, which the Democrats had literally no input in drafting and, worst, offered no guard rails to curtail or constrain Musk; an illegal South African immigrant, who has been busy as a bee, rummaging through secured, sensitive federal databases, compiling personal, confidential banking information on regular American citizens, harvesting proprietary [read that: trade secrets] information on competitors, which the courts had already told him hands-off. We have already gotten sporadic reports that at least two Social Security recipients have had their benefits stopped, and monies debited (unlawfully clawed back) from their approved personal checking accounts. The same with NYC. It's Citibank checking account was over-drafted to the tune of $15,000 when US Treasury acting on behest of Musk somehow managed to reverse an eight million dollar transaction. No one (including the NYC Comptroller) even...