What’s Good – 27 June
Amsterdam Avenue, Washington Heights. Times have changed since “Baby Got Back.” I rest my case. Joe Schoss posted a really thoughtful response to Blacks & Jews, Parts One & Two. He pegs a few things that I never even thought of, including: It occurs to me that one of the main sticking points between the […]
Music Dorks Rule
I didn’t know how much of a dork I was until I realized that Jeff Chang was, duh, passing this set of questions onto me. Total volume of music files on my computer: According to iTunes, I’ve got 24.24 GB of music, 4117 songs. This pales in comparison to the Great Library of Chang, But […]
Blacks and Jews, Part Two
Black Christians: Praying to a Jewish Rabbi named Joshua for nearly 400 years. Let me be perfectly clear: For all our bellyaching, Black anti-Semitism hasn’t cost Jews their lives or livelihoods. White racism, on the other hand, has cost people of color theirs, over and over. Jews — as whites in America — are participants […]
Interlude: Jerusalem
At a juncture between the Jewish Quarter and Muslim Quarter of the Old City, two soldiers, Israelis, stand behind a barricade. Their eyes follow a schoolboy, an Arab. The child has found a mannequin’s head that’s been severed from the rest of its body. He contemplates the hunk of Styrofoam, holding it in his hands. […]
Blacks and Jews, Part One
Jews on bikes, Ashkelon, Israel. While in Israel, I got a call from a friend at the Village Voice about the brewing battle between Russell Simmons and the ADL. When I returned, I ended up in the paper. Ironic for me that, in all my time as a journalist, I’ve never addressed the Black-Jewish rift. […]