I voted today. Here, in Los Angeles, I was one of the few to do so. With prospects of skyrocketing taxes, deep cuts to education and healthcare hanging in the balance, almost nobody cared enough to cast a vote. At the time I write this on Tuesday night, a 12% voter turnout is predicted.
What happened to us?
And by us I mean all of us who gathered last November to stand in line for as long as it took to cast our vote. For a moment, when I stepped into my …

I remember April 4, 1968, the day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. I still hold distinct images of my mother and grandmother sobbing once they heard the news and I remember the black-and-white images broadcast during the special reports the following day.
I’d like to think that those of us too young to actually remember the assassination of Dr. King are lucky. In my deepest optimism, I hope that America’s younger generations will never experience the ravaging heart pain of an assassination, especially one prompted by racist motives. …

Its Tis grew up in rural upstate New York, and with her sister, integrated the Head Start program and later the public school they attended. This was the late sixties. It was really, really hard. At 13 she went to a racially mixed boarding school where she was teased for “acting white.” This was the late seventies. It was really, really hard. Because of these experiences, she has learned to dance with understanding between different races and cultures; learning, periodically stepping in it, and …

by Andrew Padula

Etta James, you go girl! You may have dissed me and probably just about everyone else to ever come within one hundred yards of you. You display no couth and little class. But, if you throw down and beat the crap out of Beyonce, you do so with my blessing.
About a dozen years ago, I played the St Louis Blues Festival and this was a biggun’. Artists performing included the likes of Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, Rufus Thomas, etc. etc… and Etta James. The …

Perhaps because I am still grappling with the last stages of a brutal flu, I was slow to get excited about my trip to DC. I’m not a fan of big crowds and usually prefer the eagle’s eye vantage point I get from watching the biggest spectacles on television. Still, as a native Washingtonian with a mom who grew up in segregation and took part in the Civil Rights protests, I knew I had to get here to soak in the energy of our nation’s renewed hope.
I arrived at LAX …

Another young, unarmed black man has been shot and killed by a police officer. Early New Year’s Day in Oakland, Oscar Grant, a 22 year old father, held his hands up and pleaded with the arresting officers not to hurt him because he had a daughter. But once he had been wrestled down to the ground, with one officer’s knee in Grant’s neck area, a second officer stepped back, took out his gun and shot Oscar Grant the back. And then Oscar Grant was handcuffed. And then Oscar …

I find myself in an unusual position. Following the racial fallout from the Prop 8 win, I am examining my self in terms of my membership in a powerful, privileged majority. The straight majority. It’s funny, being straight, I often don’t think about my sexual orientation and all the social benefits I enjoy because of it. It is just as I observe many white folks not examining the privileges of being white. First I was pissed about the racially loaded reaction to the passage of Prop 8, but lately I’ve …

My mother refused to spank me. And by that choice alone, she is a straight up visionary, way ahead of her time as a 19 year old single mother in the early 60’s. What amplifies her smart instincts is the fact that she had spent a formative part of her childhood growing up in the Deep South, during Jim Crow. She watched first hand as black mothers would have to beat their own black sons and daughters in front of white onlookers in order to save their children’s lives.
But when …

Isaac Hayes and his music will always live in some of my fondest, most precious memories of growing up. My mom was an audiophile, always she filled our apartment with the most glorious rhythm and blues and jazz of the late 60’s and 70’s. Isaac Hayes’ was one of her favorites and consequently one of mine. ‘Hot Buttered Soul’ is one of my favorite albums of all time to this day. Hayes’ smooth, complicated, soul rocking compositions provided the perfect soundtrack to my jagged young life.
I got to spend a …

August Wilson, in his own words. An excerpt from a 2004 interview that appeared in The Believer Mag.
I watched, in a bus station in downtown St. Paul, these four Japanese guys have breakfast. They sat there and chatted politely among themselves. One of em got up and took pictures. Now I found out from their conversation that they were taking Greyhound across the country to California to go to college. They can all afford to fly first class but they takin a bus, they havin adventure, to have some fun. …

Contributor Andrew Padula has been in situations throughout his life where he’s felt compelled to address racial issues from his unusual perspective. Andrew is a white, politically conservative, blues musician who’s been teaching and touring the U.S. and Europe since 1993. He can be seen with blues legend Bobby Parker on B.E.T. Jazz Central as well as on Carlos Santana’s recent DVD release “Montreux Blues Summit”. His point of view adds plenty to our discussion, so I welcome Andrew and his column The Topsoil to Allaboutrace.com. As Andrew says, “You …

It occurs to me that in the last 90 days, the mainstream media (MSM) has broadcast more positive images of the American black man than at any time since the late 1980’s when The Cosby Show was airing original episodes and in syndication simultaneously. On top of Obama’s screen time, I’ve seen more black male pundits speaking about America than ever before. Barack Obama’s candidacy has broadened the way America sees the American black male, decisively and in a way that I believe is permanent.
Some of you may remember …

One Nation Under A Groove
Parliament Funkadelic
If you were never a Funkateer…If you never saw Parliament Funkadelic live in concert…well, you missed something spectacular.
“Tell Sugah!”

If I had posted this piece in its original form, it would have meant that I was tone deaf. It would have meant that I was so wrapped up in happy memories that I couldn’t face facts. This piece had been a straightforward narrative expressing how much I loved the dance music of the 80’s: disco, Paradise garage style house, synth infused pop and how clubbing in New York City and Washington DC during that era shaped my coming of age. It revealed the wistful nostalgia I carry for the …

Bill Cosby is right. He may not be right in every little detailed observation of the intra-racial problems plaguing the black community, but his overall picture is true.
MR. COSBY: Let’s deal first with what people call the systemic—the, the racism that exists in this country, which is absolutely for real. But people just say it. They say, “Well, there’s systemic and institutional racism.” “What do you mean by that?” Well, what I mean is that the power structure can stop a person from getting …