If the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights movement made demands that altered the course of American lives and backed up those demands with the willingness to give up your life in service of your civil rights, with Black Lives Matter, a more internalized change is being asked for: recognition.
As I detail in my new book: 'Hard Measures, How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives,' there are many myths surrounding the detention of a relatively small number of top terrorists at CIA-run 'black sites' from 2002 until they were sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.
I think that American music, for me, it's a synthesis of a lot of different things. But for me growing up in North Carolina, the stuff that I was listening to, the things that I was hearing, it was all about black music, about soul music.
I voted for Barack because he was black. 'Cuz that's why other folks vote for other people - because they look like them... That's American politics, pure and simple.
The larger meaning here is that mainstream journalists simply cannot talk about things that the two parties agree on; this is the black hole of American politics.
The prison industrial system, things like that are cleverly put in place to attempt to marginalize a certain group of people - and it's not only black, it's replete across the American society.
American television, for all its faults, still has a black presence in shows and even in commercials. You'll see black people in automobile ads, black women starring on their own television shows. We don't see that on British television.
Most of black America is in housing projects, without jobs, living on welfare. And this is not the case in 'The Cosby Show,' because all the values in that household are strictly what I would call white American values.
It infuriates me that the work of white American writers can be universal and lay claim to classic texts, while black and female authors are ghetto-ized as 'other.'
I never hated hip-hop. It became the new rock and roll. It became the biggest thing that Africans have ever done in the history of the Americas. Hip-hop put more black Americans on than anything before it. It fed more people. It allowed them to diversify into clothing lines and billion-dollar headphone companies.
I am an abolitionist. What does this mean? Abolitionist resistance and resilience draws from a legacy of black-led anti-colonial struggle in the United States and throughout the Americas, including places like Haiti, the first black republic founded on the principles of anti-colonialism and black liberation.
There are two worlds out there - two Americas out there. If you're a white person, there's one way of being a citizen in our country, and if you're a brown or a black body, there's another way of being a citizen, and that way is very close to death. It's very close to the loss of your life.
I wanted to be Amish when I was a kid. You just wear black and white - what could be better? One less thing to worry about.
Without networks like the Black Immigration Network, organizations like Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees would not get the support and resources and amplification that their voices that they need and deserve.
Did Amy Winehouse have a hit single from 'Frank?' I love 'Frank,' but people didn't really pay attention to her until 'Back to Black.' So no, I haven't had a hit single. I personally am not bothered about that.
I loved the Black Eyed Peas. I was obsessed with them, and they were my favorite group ever, and Amy Winehouse, as well; I love her.
I listened to a lot of Amy Winehouse: her albums 'Frank' and 'Back to Black'. She was such an incredible artist. She was just so raw and had her unique sound; she paired jazz with pop and was so soulful at the same time. So I pulled from her a lot in the beginning.
Black holes provide theoreticians with an important theoretical laboratory to test ideas. Conditions within a black hole are so extreme, that by analyzing aspects of black holes we see space and time in an exotic environment, one that has shed important, and sometimes perplexing, new light on their fundamental nature.
In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black.
In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black. In Brazil, it's almost as if one drop of white ancestry makes you white.
