Charlie Kirk did not invent the method of traveling “stump debates” or campus spectacles; that tradition reaches back centuries. But he did master a modern version of it by bullying underprepared college kids rather than engaging seasoned orators, scholars or…
Mississippi’s ‘strange fruit’ harvested again
Apparently strange fruit is still being harvested. That’s the chilling metaphor of Black bodies hanging from trees in the American South. Mississippi long has been the epicenter of America’s most brutal racial domestic terrorisms, lynchings. Between 1877 and 1950, according…
The American Age of Rage
We are living in what can only be called an Age of Rage — a moment when political violence has become as normalized in public life as school shootings, homicides among Black men and the loss of civil rights once…
Donald Trump is neither strong nor masculine as president
Donald J. Trump may be the richest and oldest president in U.S. history, but beneath the glittering headlines lies a portrait of profound emotional and moral poverty — a leader marked not by strength, but by defensiveness, dishonesty, vanity and…
What we learned from Hurricane Katrina
“We weren’t refugees. We were Americans. But to the world, we were treated like we didn’t belong.” — Ricky Fountain, Katrina survivor now living in Arkansas Twenty years ago today, Hurricane Katrina did more than flood a city; it…
When citizenship becomes a test and the tester is morally bankrupt
In August, journalist Mirandaa Jeyaretnam of TIME reported the Trump administration had expanded its definition of “good moral character” for citizenship applicants. The new policy directs U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to apply a “holistic” standard that screens not just…
The end of Civil Rights (1964–2025): An American obituary
Its killers were many: A GOP-led gravediggers campaign determined to “make America great again” by undoing decades of progress; a U.S. Supreme Court that dismantled affirmative action, voting protections and reproductive rights; and state lawmakers who slashed funding for HBCUs,…
Rated “J” for Jesus: A box office blasphemy
In the global capitals of cinema — Hollywood in the United States, Bollywood in India, and Nollywood in Nigeria — one name crosses genres, crosses cultures and crosses continents. It’s not the name of a starlet, a mogul, or a…
Criminalizing humanity — turning Good Samaritans into lawbreakers
In a nation that often prides itself on Christian values, humanitarian outreach and freedom, an alarming trend is unfolding: Compassion is being criminalized. Law enforcement officers would detail, arrest and/or take Jesus Christ and all his disciples to jail for…
The mental health crisis behind our domestic threats
In two separate but eerily similar events, America was again reminded of its two greatest modern failures: Untreated mental illness and racialized responses to violence. One suspect entered a Walmart in Michigan and stabbed 11 people in broad daylight. The…
Remembering Hulk Hogan: The man, the myth, the mixed legacy
Terry Gene Bollea — known to the world as Hulk Hogan — was more than just a wrestling icon. He was a cultural phenomenon. The man who ripped T-shirts with ease and flexed biceps like bronze statues died Thursday morning…
A national wake-up call on Black America’s relationship with water
Now more than ever, America must confront a long-standing yet under-acknowledged public health and cultural crisis: Black Americans and water. The sudden and tragic death of Malcolm-Jamal Warner — an actor beloved across generations — has cast a spotlight on…