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June 30, 2001
The Stacks
Black Families 
Books and other publications related to African American and Black African families and culture. drylongso genealogy
The Stacks
Family Research Documentation We've provided a list of books and publications that will more than speed you on your way to studying your family tree. drylongso genealogy
The Stacks
Multicultural Heritage We've provided a list of books and publications that will more than speed you on your way to studying your family tree. drylongso genealogy
June 29, 2001
The Stacks
Forget Me Not "Past the main farmhouse on the hill, past the smokehouse and the chicken yard and the barn to Jones' shack, the men came. They were angry. They had vengeance in mind, and before long, Jones would be dead, his wife a widow for life, his children fatherless. Jones would be laid to rest in Ladonia's Pleasant Grove Cemetery in a section designated for blacks. Buried with him would be a nasty tale about life in a small Texas town at a time when being 'colored' meant you did certain things to stay alive. You lived in debt, and you kept your mouth shut." Dallas Observer
Beef-a-Real
Net in My Back Yard "'The general consensus is that GoInternet is unwelcome in the neighborhood,'" Goodman says. "'The employees simply have no consideration for anyone else on the street. They haven’t really been rude to me, per se, they just congregate outside and intimidate customers by their presence. They used to congregate right outside my shop, but I spoke to a supervisor and he put a stop to it. It’s cold outside now, so I don’t know where those people hang out on their breaks, but wait until the weather gets warm.'" What next, reckless eyeballing? Philadelphia City Paper
June 28, 2001
Review
Baby Boy "Jody lives with his mother Juanita (A.J. Johnson) and loves her dearly, but wishes her burly new boyfriend, an O.G. named Melvin (Ving Rhames), would move the hell out of the house, instead of stalking around like he owns the place and making Jody feel like a guest who overstayed his welcome. Which, point of fact, he is." New York Press
June 26, 2001
Review
Like Daddy "A newspaper highlighting a story on fathers is spread across my bed. I glance at the portraits of men lovingly holding their little ones, and childhood memories of you flash in my mind. Pushing the paper aside I lie down and, after all these years, allow thoughts of you to linger. My right jaw flattened against the sheet, I am surprised to feel a tear ride down my left cheek." drylongso
Genealogy
Inn on the Square This young brother has it going on! Owner of a hotel in Upstate South Carolina, married with a great family, and spiritual to boot. He's hanging on after the massive losses from last year's NAACP boycott in South Carolina. Here's our conversation about entrepreneurship and family reunions. drylongso
Genealogy
Audio Interview: Dr. Ione D. Vargus Listen in while Dr. Ione Vargus tells us how and why she created the Family Reunion Institute. drylongso
Genealogy
Why I Study Family Reunions "In my initial research, I found that while many Southern families feel the need to gather annually or semi-annually (usually in July or August) with siblings, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins to renew kinship bonds, introduce new members of the family, reminisce about lost members, and retell the family's history; marked differences exist between the typical white family reunion and its African-American counterpart." drylongso
Genealogy
Roots Woman "She was a seventh grade history teacher veteran when an innocent class assignment led her to discover the story of a lifetime--her own. It was also the story of her great, great, grandmother, Easter Butler, a beautiful and brave slave who would not allow her spirit to be broken." drylongso
Genealogy
Journey to My Seminole Family "This story started long before I was born. It is the story of my grandparents, great-grandparents and their ancestors. It is the saga of a race part African, part Native American, and part Hispanic who would not be slaves and would leave one country for another to stay free." drylongso
June 25, 2001
Books
Sex, Race and Outer Space "At first glance you may not take Delany for a famous science fiction writer. With his full beard and head of snow-white hair, walking cane and all-black immaculate outfit, Delany, who is on a book tour publicizing the re-release of his groundbreaking Dhalgren, could very well be mistaken for someone’s grandfather." Support Drylongso, buy Dhalgren.
Philadelphia City Paper
Books
Noir Apparent "Fearless Jones is being touted by its publisher as Mosley’s 'return to mysteries.' The novel launches a new series to go with the Easy Rawlins and Socrates Fortlow stories, this one concerned with Paris Minton, a shy, unassuming man trying to make a go of it as a black bookstore owner in 1950s L.A. Paris is drawn into the novel’s intrigue not by love or money, though both play a role, but because four chapters into the book, he returns to his store only to find it’s been burned to the ground. '[T]hat bookstore was what made me somebody rather than just anybody,' he narrates. 'Burning down my store was just the same as shooting me, and somebody would have to make restitution for that crime.' Support Drylongso, buy Fearless Jones.
Philadelphia City Paper
June 21, 2001
Books
The Mirth of a Nation "The old coon was a cheerful simpleton who regarded work with utter contempt. Coons were assigned these characteristics, naturally enough, to assuage white concerns about the moral propriety of slavery. But the contemporary coon, the post-civil-rights coon, now guards a keen sense of racial injustice alongside the old beaming and ingratiating smiles. Where Stepin Fetchit spoke slowly and was careful never to offend, Tucker and Rock speak quickly, loudly, profanely, and with every intention to provoke. They would recoil at the suggestion that they are at all like Stepin Fetchit. They seem to flatter themselves that their brand of humor is a momentous retort to Fetchitism." New Republic
June 19, 2001
Books
Proving Ground "He plops down beside me and tells me he has been thinking of his father, who it becomes clear was not much of a presence in his life. His father, Tyrone tells me, was killed earlier in the summer, stabbed in an argument at a liquor store just a few blocks from his house. I start to ask him about his dad, about their relationship, but before I can engage him, Frank charges over, claiming that someone has stolen his raincoat. Kareem soon saunters along, rapping. Therris follows. 'You never get quiet like this in the city,' says Kareem, urging his compatriots to be silent. It lasts 30 seconds before Frank mimics the sound of a police siren. The stillness, I suspect, is discomfiting." Chicago Tribune
Books
Laying the Blame: The Scandal of Rwanda and the West "...When the Czech Ambassador to the UN Security Council likened what was happening to the Holocaust, he was taken aside by British and American diplomats and told that on no account was he to use such inflammatory language again: it was 'not helpful'..." Guardian Unlimited
Sports
Destiny's Double Dribble "For Destiny's Child, their only crime was being the first of the special halftime entertainers to perform live in front of a hoops crowd. Plus, they did it in Philly, where, urban legend has it, restless locals have been known to boo parades and Santa Claus. Throw in the fact that the 76ers were losing badly at the time and that Michelle Williams, one of Destiny's Children, was wearing a Lakers jersey (fellow singer Kelly Rowland wore 76ers colors, though, and lead vocalist Beyoncé Knowles wore a top that read 'NBA'), and it all added up to a roar of boos." Thank you Philadelphia!!!!!! ed. Salon.com
June 17, 2001
Political Animal
Bush Speak: An Interview with Mark Crispin Miller "DH: What's the biggest misperception the public has of Dubya?"
"MCM: That he's a moron -- and a benign moron at that. Although Bush is indeed illiterate, bone-ignorant and generally illogical, he's not a cretin. At the nastier kind of politics, he is extraordinarily shrewd. In this he is a lot like Richard Nixon, who, as I argue, is his spiritual father. Bush only benefits from his wide comic reputation as a genial idiot (he's neither genial nor an idiot). So we 'misunderestimate' him at our peril." Alternet.org
June 15, 2001
Music
Rhyme and Reason "They have come to talk about music. Some of black America's finest minds have travelled the length of the country to attend a hip-hop summit. Quoting everyone from Noam Chomsky to Mark Twain and with sessions on everything from conflict resolution to racial profiling, they are here to try to inject reason into their rhymes." Guardian Unlimited
June 14, 2001
Political Animal
Preppin' for Prison "Any card branded with an infraction will trigger a buzz and a red bulb alerting officers to remove the student from the line for questioning and possible disciplinary action. If all is well with the card, a green bulb clears the student for the next checkpoint. Here, they send their bags through an X-ray machine, then shuffle through a metal detector, where a harmless belt buckle, ruler, or piece of jewelry could set off the alarm, subjecting any student to a body scan and pat down. The kids are more preoccupied with the ringing of the first-period bell than with civil rights violations, since anyone who hasn't cleared security by then will be marked for cutting and have to wait on line until second period." Village Voice
June 13, 2001
Political Animal
Color of Justice "Smith was not the only defendant in Tulia to have powder cocaine introduced as evidence against him. In fact, virtually everyone caught in the bust was charged with selling powder cocaine, in some instances up to a half-dozen counts. Tulia doesn't even have a fast food restaurant, much less a bar or nightclub. The per capita income is $11,000. Yet suddenly powdered cocaine, a drug normally associated with affluent users, seemed to be everywhere - at least everywhere in Tulia's hardscrabble black community. And while powder was everywhere, it only seemed to appear in small quantities - just enough to constitute a second-degree felony. Could there really be forty coke dealers in a rural Panhandle community? 'Where the drug addicts at? Where the big houses? Where all the gold teeth?' Smith asked." Texas Observer
June 11, 2001
Books
Phil Jackson's Summer Reading List We know Shaq was assigned Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is, but we wonder how the rest were assigned. Quite a nice reading list in fact. We at Drylongso wouldn't mind being on any team Jackson coached. Academic, of course. Amazon.com
June 8, 2001
Sports
Hollywood Confidential: NBA Courts Entertainment Elite "Court side, in the bleachers, is recording artist Brian McKnight, stepping out of his warmups. His team, in the NBA's newly minted, closed-to-the-public Entertainment League, is up around 8 p.m., and in the minutes till then, he's chatting up friends and family. Close by, Deon Richmond, from 'Sister, Sister' and 'Scream 3,' has finished his game and is just chillin'. 'Sometimes,' confides Richmond, 'I come a week before to check out the competition's game.'" L.A. Times
Sports
Germany's soccer team scores a multiracial first "Even as the German media celebrated his ascension to the national team, one newspaper couldn't resist referring to Asamoah as 'a warrior from the Ashanti tribe.'" Christian Science Monitor
Sports
The Himba and the Dam "Himba leaders also object to the dam because it would flood hundreds of graves, which play a central role in the tribe's religious beliefs and social structure. In times of crisis, family patriarchs consult their forebears through special ceremonies at grave sites, and graves are often used to settle disputes over access to land. Acreage is owned communally, but each permanent settlement is guarded by an 'owner of the land,' usually the oldest man of the family who has lived at that place for the longest time. When deciding who should be able to graze their cattle in a particular area, Himba compare the number of ancestors they have buried there. They ask, 'Whose ancestral graves are older, ours or theirs?'" Scientific American
Sports
The Killing Fields "In a country like Nigeria, where endemic corruption and misguided subsidy policies combine to create constant fuel shortages, free gas isn't something villagers keep away from. Indeed, in Jesse Town they swarmed the river with buckets and jerrycans to scoop up the precious fuel for sale on the thriving black market. By the time of the inevitable cataclysm, village elders say, the gas was chest-deep in some locations." In These Times.com
Political Animal
My Germany, My Burden "I am tired and ashamed. I am tired of the never-ending flow of reports from my country about a people insecure of who they are and who they want to be. I am ashamed of the country where a black man from Africa was beaten to death because he was a black man from Africa. Seeing the dateline 'Germany' in the newspaper has begun to make me nervous. Whom have they chased down the street now? What Jewish cemetery have they desecrated now?" Christian Science Monitor
June 7, 2001
Books
Ghosts of Manila "In a fascinating narrative, Kram posits instead that Ali, duped by Muslims, was a Chauncey Gardiner figure straight from the pages of Jerzy Kosinski's 'Being There': 'For his every utterance, heavy breathing from the know-nothings to the trendy tasters of faux revolution ... Seldom has a public figure of such superficial depth been more wrongly perceived -- by the right and the left.'" another review. buy the book.
Salon.com
June 5, 2001
Fnord
Beyond the Civil Rights Industry "This is one reason that, at the outset of any discussion of a new black politics, it is particularly important to raise some basic questions about the political experience and inclination of elite black leadership: Where are its roots in the lives of the black poor, or its connection to those institutions still based among them, in particular the black church? How wise is its unquestioning alliance with the Democratic Party? Can it engage creatively with the continued devolution of policy choices—for example, in the provision of social services, or the quality of local education and training, or local rules on employment opportunity—that most directly affect the condition of the poor? Finally, what is that elite's view on US foreign policy, and the relation of that to it its domestic agenda?" Lani Guinier's response. Julianne Malveaux's response. Manning Marable's response. Read all the responses in the entire exchange. Boston Review
Political Animal
A New Push to Integrate Public Black Colleges "Ms. Oxendine says she feels comfortable with the mix of races in her graduate classes, but believes the campus would have to revamp its image to attract significant numbers of white undergraduates. 'Every building is named after historically black leaders,' she says. (Many buildings are, but Bowie officials note that not every one is.)" Chronicle of Higher Education
Fnord
Our Flaw? We're Just Not Liberals "We have no articles of faith." Washington Post
Political Animal
Black and Blue "The violence perpetrated by the P.G. cops is a curious development. Usually, police brutality is framed as a racial issue: Rodney King suffering at the hands of a racist white Los Angeles Police Department or more recently, an unarmed Timothy Thomas, gunned down by a white Cincinnati cop. But in more and more communities, the police doing the brutalizing are African Americans, supervised by African-American police chiefs, and answerable to African-American mayors and city councils. In the case of P.G. County, the brutality is cast against the backdrop of black America's power base, the largest concentration of the black middle class in the country." more, more, and more. Washington Monthly
Political Animal
The Great Down-Low Debate "'I like girls. I have a girl,' Tevin says with a smirking shrug. 'But every once in a while, 'cause women can be very stressful, I might chill with a dude. And it's just having fun. If something pops off, it pops off. Give each other a pound and meet up later.'" Village Voice
June 1, 2001
Sports
Catholic League Accused of Racism A predominantly white Roman Catholic athletic league denied membership to a black church's grammar school citing concerns about safety, a decision that has prompted charges of racism. Salon.com