“It will be refreshing to have a classy, beautiful, dignified First Lady in the White House,” a white woman in a place called Clay County, West Virginia, wrote in a Facebook post the other day. I assume it was her way of finally seeing the brightening light at the end of the tunnel in white people’s slow, long march back to the White House after eight years of political and racial consternation. What with the darkness that has permeated the White House that the slaves built centuries ago, and where come January 20, a Black family having occupied the place …

IRRIPRESSIBLE AND IRREPLACEABLE Just after 8 PM the night of Thursday, November 4, I received a call informing me that “Bob’s in the hospital… he’s down…” It sounded like “breaking news” I would sometimes joke with Bob whenever he called me to discuss something… My Initial thought was to get dressed and head to the hospital. But after listening to the ominous tone of the caller’s voice, and sensing the seriousness of the situation, I concluded that I shouldn’t be there. Bob’s family was present, and under the circumstances, aside from taking up space my presence there wouldn’t do anything …

Amidst the contention the STM quietly bides its time Generations of Black people from various parts of the world have written or told their stories about when and why Union United Church was established, and why it has special meaning to them. There are many versions, but when all is said and done, all will invariably agree that the historic church was established over a hundred years ago as a haven from the nefarious social forces of the day who weren’t open, let alone welcoming, of the presence of Black people in their particular houses of worship or the human …

Haiti. She’s a recurrent, permanent living disaster for millions, a cash cow for international disaster capitalists. Read journalist and author Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Also, in her seminal work, Dead Aid, which focuses on Africa, Zambian-born economist Dambisa Moyo points a wags a finger at post-colonial Africa, claiming that aid is the cause of all of Africa’s problems. Maybe not all, but many of them; decades of international aid, ostensibly to foster many African countries development always seem to quickly evaporate. Depending on where one is on the continent, continued underdevelopment is the casualty …

THEIR PERCEPTION, OUR REALITY Prologue “Oh boy…” It has been a long, long time since I’ve witnessed that subtle behaviour. But a couple Saturdays ago, after having done some shopping, I was getting close to home so I began to cross the street as I normally do. Ahead of me was a white woman walking on the sidewalk, a little purse comfortably and securely ‘tucked’ between her arm and upper body. With a quick furtive look she noticed me–and prepared. As I got closer to her, I noticed she squeezed the already secured purse juuuust a little bit tighter. Actually, …

It’s the 21st century phase in Black peoples’ continuing fight for Civil Rights and what’s right […] Social construct, racial profiling, psychological effects, stereotypes; genocide: cultural and racial; demeaning; systemic structural racism… Those are just some of the descriptors used by University of Victoria professor, Dr. Charlotte Loppie, director of the School of Public Health and Social Policy. She was a guest on the September 4 edition of CBC Radio’s Sunday Edition. Dr. Loppie was speaking on the history of First Nations people in Canada, with particular reference to the murder of Colten Boushie, a 22-year-old Native man who was …

My recurring thought? I can’t believe my mother is dead [I remember] many years ago the daughter of a longtime family friend died. And, as is normally the case, myself and other members of our family, were present at the church for the funeral service. Some years later, the matriarch (she was preceded by her husband a few years earlier) of the family succumbed to an undisclosed illness. Shocking news to all who knew her. She and my mother worked together for many years at a now defunct downtown healthcare institution and enjoyed a decades-old friendship. She was a woman …

You witnessed all the pomp and circumstance, and competitions of the Rio 2016 Summer Games I watched with some interest part of the opening ceremonies of the 31st Olympiad down there in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. But I wasn’t that taken by the proverbial “pomp and circumstance” of the opening ceremonies, which included one aspect of special interest to me: representation of Brazil’s Black people and the history of slavery, which is the why they are in that country (as well as other countries across the South American continent) in the first place. One of my reasons for watching that …

IT’S A JUNGLE OUT THERE Yes it is. And sometimes it “makes me wonder how I keep from goin’ under.” The words of preeminent rappers Grandmaster Flash at the dawn of the 1980s continue to resonate. But make no mistake about it, despite incremental, perceptible change, the institutional forces remain steadfast, a firm grip on the levers of power—the status quo—as evidenced by the historic social inequity. Hence, Grandmaster Flash’s [The] Message, which continues to resonate. Which is why a colleague recently spoke those words “It’s a jungle…” as he trolled the Internet for some specific information, coming upon copious …

The evening of June 17, 2015, around 9 p.m., 21-year-old Dylann “Storm” Roof, a white male with a Hitler-style haircut and dubious, sinister agenda, walked into the historic [AME] Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC, interrupting a prayer service by members of the congregation. Apparently Dylan Roof was welcomed into the church. And, according to a survivor, “The gunman initially sat down in the church for a while before opening fire…” When the smoke cleared nine people, including the very popular and beloved pastor of the church and state senator Democrat Clementa Pinckney were dead. Roof’s shooting rampage …