The Hip Hop Anthropologist

Democrats are in a tough situation. Align themselves with a Socialist Democrat with the winds in his sail, or allow a mediocre politico, who purchased a third (unlawful) mayoralty after terming out as mayor of NYC, to now buy the democratic nomination for president ... 

..the family of Botham Jean can express their humanity however misguided in whatever fashion they so choose. But those two aunts Jeminas saw in her conviction, not a murderer, but as mammies... a frail, vulnerable, white maiden needing comfort and solace from those mean black people... Let's be honest... The bailiff using the moment to touch the long silky blond hair (wearing the cheap flea-bitten wig she had on that she should've been embarrassed to leave the house with...) she secretly craves; and, the Judge, using the moment to naively cast aside her office to ostensibly proselytize to a racist murder (but wanted to comfort like a mammy of old losing the victim in this an outrageous display of affection) shows that some of us are walking around "deaf, dumb, and blind..." Ain't no future in cooning and buffooning, though... And rest assured the Judge Tammy Kemp’s career came to a screeching halt and abrupt stop... as it well ought to...

  New York City generally and Brooklyn particularly has long been unaffordable for all but the most inveterate city-dwellers. So, after graduate school at Buffalo State College, I sought my fortune elsewhere; first, in Delaware before settling in Maryland (where I now live - albeit tenuously - on the Eastern Shore. And though that is little excuse for no longer listening to WBAI, after station management inscrutably cancelled the “Caldwell Chronicles,” the inexplicable cancellation became my line in the sand nonetheless. And I lost interest in ‘BAI programming. So, when I learned that famed radio personality Bob Law now hosted a show – i.e., “On the Streets” - on Saturday mornings, I returned grudgingly to the station line-up to listen.    I tuned in a tad bit early because the NAN livestream with Rev. Al Sharpton was winding down. “On the Count” was doing its outro and something the current host said alarmed me. He referenced producer and host Eddie Ellis in the pa...

The debate swirling about income inequality reflects a tension drawn on simplistic conclusions from discredited conservative talking points, which upon deeper reflection are little more than cheap potshots against the “welfare state.” This flock of canards detracts us away from obvious truths. The Republicans and Democrats are flip sides of the same coin. And the body politic is rife with unbridled corruption by both. A more important issue that is sadly missed in flawed analyses by both liberals and conservatives is a race and class divide that pits poor and working class Whites against working and middle class Blacks, who should be natural allies. They have more in common than not. Case in point, Scott Walker in Wisconsin was allowed free reign to engage in union busting activities by unilaterally eliminating collective bargaining for public sector workers. Instead of working class Whites joining in the campaign to oust Scott, they cynically voted against their own be...

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 ...