Big Sole Blog (BSB)

President Obama spoke at the White House today about the Trayvon Martin case saying that 35 years ago, he could have been Trayvon. He said what he had to say diplomatically, making this salient point: . . . [W]hen you think about why, in the African- American community at least, there's a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it's important to recognize that the African- American

I have been very quiet at this blog on the George Zimmerman trial because it feels more like the defense has been prosecuting Trayvon Martin than defending George Zimmerman. It's been painful to hear and watch, especially for those of us who have black sons and perceive that what's being said is "all young black men are dangerous criminals." Nevertheless, I had to share this picture which I

Reading a post about Savannah's history at Examiner.com, I discovered a link to a video in which Paula Deen, appearing on the finale of NBC's Who Do You Think You Are? last year, discovered that her great-great-grandfather, John Batts, owned 35 slaves. Deen had denied for years, she says, that her family ever had anything to do with slavery; however, she did not seem particularly shocked

I did not watch the CNN report on the n-word versus cracker. I'm too old to waste my time with fruitless discussions; however, this clip from that show with LeVar Burton, Wynton Marsalis, Don Lemon, and Tim Wise came to my attention, and I thought it was worth posting. In the clip Burton tells how he, as a black man, behaves when stopped in his car by police officers. Then Don Lemon talks about

FLOTUS visits Harper High, April 2013 (Nancy Stone-Pool/Getty)  So, what was Michelle Obama talking about when that GetEqual heckler interrupted her? When I first read about First Lady Michelle Obama's confrontation with Ellen Sturtz of the gay rights group GetEqual, I laughed. The first lady was keeping it real. Sturtz clearly did not know who she was messing with, I thought. It's no secret

In this video, A.P. Tureaud Jr. (son of the famous Civil Rights attorney) and Louisiana historian Alfred E. Lemmon discuss the musical history of Louisiana's free people of color. Their information is pretty accurate. For instance, it's true that prior to the cultural Americanization of Louisiana and before the Civil War, Louisiana neighborhoods were not as segregated as they became later.

Birmingham police arrested Martin Luther King Jr. on 12 April 1963, and he penned his famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" while imprisoned, slipping it as a crumpled wad of paper to his friend Clarence Jones. Jones did not know what it was until later. On its 50th anniversary, rather than comment on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," I'm commemorating its

Endymion's Pontchartrain Beach float is soooo long that it couldn't make a corner turn. The Krewe of Endymion debuted its massive Pontchartrain Beach float at its 2013 parade, three days before Mardi Gras. The float has multiple cars, is 375 feet long, and holds at least 230 riders, and it pays tribute to a local amusement park that closed in 1983. The cars represent different attractions and

Today I saw an article at the Huffington Post with the headline, "Bobby Jindal: GOP Should 'Stop Being The Stupid Party'." The article includes the following statement: Jindal told Politico Republicans should “stop being the stupid party” by working to embrace a larger group of constituents rather than becoming the party of "big anything." As I read this statement and more of Jindal's rhetoric

What can I say about the death of Rodney King at age 47 but R.I.P., accidental and imperfect icon. I wish I could say that his death represents the end of an era, but with the Trayvon Martin case, the Darius Simmons case (not his murder as much as how the police treated the family while his body lay on the sidewalk) and other similar cases, I know any announcement of an end to police officers

This post has been syndicated at BlogHer.com where it has been updated to reflect the revelation that the artist in black face is of African descent.The National Afro-Swedish Association is demanding that Sweden's minister of culture Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth be fired for participating in an April 15th World Art Day celebration during which she ate a piece of cake. The problem is not that she ate

As excerpted from my post at WritingJunkie.net: With Trayvon's death, it has become apparent that some people, even some very kind people, had no idea that black mothers need to have "the talk" with their sons. And others, too,—less kind—have revealed what they do not know as well, white men such as John Derbyshire, who took it upon himself to say there is a white version of "the talk" that white

I remember hearing the news in November 2008 that someone had burned down Macedonia Church of God in Christ in Massachusetts in backlash for President Barack Obama's historic win, and I thought then, "And so it begins." With Obama's election it seemed there would be a rise in white supremacist violence, and there was for a while. That's the bad news.The good news is that the church has been

In 2012, a documentary based on Douglas A. Blackmon's Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, Slavery By Another Name, will premier on PBS. The book documents the systematic re-enslavement of many African-Americans in prisons in the American South from the Civil War to World War II. Blackmon, a white journalist, calls this form of slavery "neoslavery" and says that slavery technically did not end until 1942

I've already written about Slavery: The Game here at this blog, and I updated and posted on the topic at BlogHer.com as well. Now there's a twist that leads us to the promotional video's creators.After contemplating speculation that the game was a hoax, possible protest, or some kind of publicity stunt, I have learned that the video on YouTube and the associated website are part of a promotion

The video embedded in this post is from Democracy NOW! and is about a documentary co-produced by actor Danny Glover. As described on its YouTube page:(the documentary and the clip feature "rare archival footage of Angela Davis, Huey P. Newton, Stokely. The Democracy NOW! episode and was) broadcast from Park City, Utah, home of the Sundance Film Festival, the nation's largest festival for

The following piece has been cross-posted and also updated at BlogHer.com.I am puzzled today and a tad distraught. Through a friend's Facebook post, I learned of a website for a supposed video game that may be real but is more than likely, ostensibly, bogus. It's called "Slavery the Game." While its website requires that you enter an age to verify you're old enough to see the horror behind the

UPDATES, March 22, 2012: Multiple news sources report that the Mississippi teen who drove the car in James Craig Anderson's murder has been sentenced to double life. Deryl Dedmon, 19, pleaded guilty to the murder and to committing a hate crime, and on Wednesday afternoon, March 21, Hinds County Circuit Judge Jeff Weill told him the following:"This craven act isn't who we are. Whatever excuse

It pleases me to announce that ColorofChange.org launched a campaign aimed at Psychology Today against Satashi Kanazawa and the magazine has dropped the evolutionary psychologist as a contributor. Psychology Today is "taking the necessary steps to prevent an incident like this from ever happening again," says the advocacy group. According to an e-mail sent to ColorOfChange.org – the nation’s

NBC talk-show host Lawrence O'Donnell is on point with his challenge to his own network to force Donald Trump to tell the American public now if he plans to run for president and stop postponing the announcement. O'Donnell makes an excellent case that Trump, by not officially filing for candidacy, is either lying about running for president and using this political flirtation as a publicity stunt