11 Search results for "ralph ellison"

This past winter, as a student teacher in a kindergarten class on the South Side of Chicago, I got the pleasure of hearing one of my students articulate the centuries old matter of black humanity within the context of whiteness and white supremacy. It happened during the beginning of the school year, and I sat […]

  There exists a certain irony that arises when Black artists attempt to achieve recognition in a country where Western European notions of what constitutes talent still predominates the artistic landscape. Recently, fellow blogger Anti-Intellect wrote a blog over at Funky Dineva challenging the Black community’s apparent outrage at Kerry Washington losing out on a […]

A group of CPS students gathered in honor of Hadiya Pendleton yesterday, and to draw attention to the gun violence many of them said threatens their own lives.

I write this in ambivalence, dejectedly trying to wrap my mind around a string of incidents that continue to unearth the plight of young Black men in this country. In scarcely a week’s time, 17 year-old Jordan Russell Davis was shot to death by another gun toting “scared” white man, while Brandon Jackson, another Black […]

“The Negro people of Montgomery, exhausted by the humiliating experiences that they had constantly faced on the buses, expressed in a massive act of non-cooperation their determination to be free. They came to see that it was ultimately more honorable to walk the streets in dignity than to ride the buses in humiliation…This principle became […]

Court Theater, the professional theater located on the University of Chicago’s campus, premiered Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man last month. I haven’t read the novel since high school and was ripped open all over again, seeing Ellison’s words acted out on stage. I was surprised to feel such a deep connection to the emotions experienced in […]

Yesterday as I sat in the library reading “Go Tell It On The Mountain” by James Baldwin I began to reflect on the role that books have played in my life. Not just any books, but in particular African-American literature. Below is a self-reflective poem that delves into my love,hatred, and passion for the written […]

When grappling with history, truth is a difficult commodity to come by and contradiction is far too common. I believe that the learning process of history has the potential and power to teach lessons of identity, narratives of building community, and the necessity for people to choose to participate in society around them. But I […]

Last week, the folks over at Racialicious re-posted a piece by Macon D., the creator of the blog, Stuff White People Do.  The article, “Stuff White People Do: Warmly Embrace a Racist Novel,” addresses the 50th anniversary celebration of Harper Lee’s only novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, published in the summer of 1960.  Macon D. […]

A few years ago, when I was still taking graduate school course work, I got into a “disagreement” with a colleague about race and class. We had just left our course on mid-20th century black literature, and were hanging out in the department lounge for some strange reason–something I’d never do now. I think we […]

Suddenly, as I’m walking down the street, I feel 50 curious eyes on the back of my neck. As I turn around to figure out where that creepy feeling could possibly be coming from, I found myself face to face with a double-decker bus filled with white tourists.