We Remember!
Posted in For the Nation and For the Culture on Apr 15th, 2026
Black Americans have often leaned on the spoken word for historical reasons. Under slavery and later segregation, literacy was restricted, formal education was unevenly denied, and written institutions were often controlled by hostile power. In that world, memory, sermon, song, testimony, storytelling, call-and-response, and public speech became vital ways of preserving truth, passing down knowledge, […]
Posted in For the Nation and For the Culture on Apr 15th, 2026
(My experimental YouTube Transcript of Modern Minstrel) Enjoy! There is a strange relationship in American entertainment between degradation and empowerment, especially where Black femininity is concerned. The trick is not simply that degradation is sold. It is that degradation is often repackaged as self-possession, confidence, boldness, liberation, or control. What is presented as power is […]
Posted in For the Nation and For the Culture on Apr 15th, 2026
How scale changes the nature of power A kingdom is a network of structures, an empire is a system that is a network of kingdoms. Kings think of how long the structure can last. They think in terms of centuries Emperors think of civilization and millennias Power does not merely grow as it rises. It […]
Posted in For the Nation and For the Culture on Apr 15th, 2026
How scale changes the form of power Power does not merely expand as it rises. It changes form. That is the central distinction between the king and the emperor. A king is not simply a smaller emperor, and an emperor is not simply a king with more territory. Each represents a different mode of thought, […]
Posted in For the Nation and For the Culture on Apr 15th, 2026
This meme is harmful because it turns a system of sexual coercion into a joke. On plantations, enslaved women were pressured to bear more children because children increased the enslaver’s labor force, wealth, and future property. Reproduction was incentivized through favors, reduced punishment, forced pairings, and constant social pressure placed on girls and women from […]
Posted in For the Nation and For the Culture on Apr 13th, 2026
All across social media, you have people who have never made contact with us, who don’t know any BA in person, only contact they do have is through digital mediums and yet they are fiercely debating our ancestry while having zero understanding of our history. It should trouble people that outsiders are so often invested […]
Posted in For the Nation and For the Culture on Apr 11th, 2026
Title: Texture Is Not Tradition What is being contested in discussions about 360 waves, durags, and wave checks is not merely a hairstyle. What is being contested is historical specificity itself. A repeated pattern appears whenever Black American culture produces something distinctive, disciplined, and recognizable. Once the form becomes visible, admired, and portable, a second […]
Posted in For the Nation and For the Culture on Apr 11th, 2026
Title: Everybody Wants the Symbol, Not the Sentence Topic: Paul Mooney’s line as a critique of cultural appropriation, racial consumption, and the separation of Black expression from Black burden Key statement: The desire for Blackness in popular culture has often been a desire for its power, style, and emotional force without any willingness to share […]
Posted in For the Nation and For the Culture on Apr 11th, 2026
“Split the pole” is commonly treated as a childish superstition, one of those small inherited sayings that survive long after people stop believing in them literally. Yet its endurance suggests that it does more than preserve irrational fear. The phrase marks a deeper social instinct. It reflects the idea that physical separation, even in a […]
Posted in For the Nation and For the Culture on Apr 11th, 2026
A recurring fracture in Black public discourse is the perception that Black women are not proud of Black men, or at least do not speak of them with pride in public. Whether that perception is fully accurate in every case is not the point. The point is that many Black men experience a constant stream […]
