One of the great ironies surrounding the phenomenon of Marvel’s latest cultural behemoth Black Panther is that a lot of Bible-believing, white evangelicals would really love it, if not for the fact that its name is remarkably similar to the revolutionary socialist political party of the 1970s. (I’m guessing the Wikipedia Black Panther disambiguation page…

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<![CDATA[ I recently started writing for a publication called Off the Page, from the creators of the popular Our Daily Bread devotional series. It’s a new forum for me to start talking about my favorite examples from pop culture and to show how the Bible can be relevant to everyday life. Anyway, I thought it…

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<![CDATA[Okay, that sounds bad. It sounds like I'm saying that Facebook is a racist place, which is bad because Facebook is filled with all manner of people, many of whom are not racist, and plus… it's not even a place. Although that makes me think of this R-rated Chappelle’s Show sketch imagining if the internet were…

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<![CDATA[(Editor’s Note: This post began as an addendum to something I wrote in April about life in Portland as a black person. For more context, or if you’re not intimidated by a 3,000-word post, check it out.)       My social media feed has been blown up with old school nostalgia. I’m seeing a ton of…

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<![CDATA[So it seems that a series of circumstances have all led me to reminisce, Pete-Rock-&-CL-Smooth-style, about my upbringing here in Portland Oregon, the undisputed whitest major city in America. Reconnecting with old friends from high school, being a little less homebound and a little more out-and-about in the city (which is a typical, if subconscious…

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<![CDATA[Imagine if your car was a clunker, (back in the day, we would've called it a "hooptie") but it was the only car you've ever known.  Both your parents drove that car, practically raised you in that car, before passing it onto you. You drive it all through high school and college, doing your best to…

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<![CDATA[ I give a brief hat tip and a shout out to Lynne Childress of The Sweet Midlife, who brought this back up in her Facebook feed the other day. It rekindled all kinds of thoughts and feelings that I’ve been meaning to say for years, but never took the time to do so. So…

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<![CDATA[I’m tongue-tied and bIeary-eyed, but I made it through. I have emerged, healthy and generally in my right mind, from what has affectionately come to be known as “J.R.’s Hostage Weekend.” That term, admittedly melodramatic, is actually a pretty fitting description of what I’ve just endured (and for the second time, no less). The “J.R.”…

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<![CDATA[The latest in lighter fare from The Root (the African-American blog collective that covers mostly politics but also dabbles in pop culture, sexuality, and sports) is from Geoffrey Dobbins, who laments living in a world of double-outcastednes… being black, and loving Star Wars. Aaron McGruder is somewhere smiling, I’m sure. ]]>

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<![CDATA[ Inspired by my friend Erika and her resolution to be a living example regarding the issues she cares about, I decided to launch a personal crusade to get people to stop using the term “the race card.” Jon Sanders, Townhall columnist and conservative policy analyst for the John Locke Foundation, was the first person…

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