#skip gates

[tarakutz]

But underneath the playfulness, it is a reminder of how fluid identity is and how many of our pasts have moved across boundaries some would like to think of as fixed.

‘Finding Your Roots’ the perfect PBS show to counter rancor, polarization of America today

[onwurd]

This year's forum presented by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University was the largest in its 23-year history.

A look back over this annual conversation on race in America.

[bostonfly]

Q: Can you imagine killing another person? A: Not a stranger...

-- David Sedaris, on finding out that an ancestor fought in the Revolutionary War

[prodigalpen]

The African Americans Many Rivers to Cross Episode 2 The Age of Slavery 1800-1860

Worse part of this was the historical account of a black woman runaway slave who killed her children rather allow them to be recaptured and grow up as slaves.

[prodigalpen]

The African Americans Many Rivers to Cross Episode 1

I've watched PBS' "Many Rivers to Cross" start to finish. Whatever you think of Skip Gates, one thing's for sure:

This is must viewing for all of US. It's not a complete history lesson, but it's a great primer and barometer for where we are and where we've been and where we have left to go.

To that end, I'm posting the whole series in segments, one after the other. My hope is that you watch 'em, if not here then over on PBS' Youtube Channel HERE.

The above episode begins with the transatlantic slave trade and the first slaves in the US. it's dark stuff but worth watching.

[svnkofa]

The Responsibility of Intellectuals in The Age oF Crack

(Pictured above from left to right, Professors: bell hooks, Henry Louis Gates, & Cornel West)

"I Would be interested in talking about what kind of values, come to replace market values, and how do we do that"

-bell hooks

[binkloves]

Peter Gomes

[odettecarotte]

Dad challenged me to a poetry contest. One poem a day, every day, until the end of the year. Free verse, cuz we don't want to have to count things like syllables. This is vacation, after all.

Thinking of Mary Karr, there will be EMOTION and NO DECORATION. Largely because my poet-mind has been weaned on therapy-speak and I couldn't write in flowers if I tried.

Of note: Dad came up with this idea right after we met Skip Gates at a diner. It figures that I stalk him all around Cambridge (I know his favorite restaurants, pharmacy and barbershop) but shook his hand in a Greek diner in Northern Virginia. Although I've seen him before, I was only able to speak to him because Dad made the introduction, "My daughter's a HUGE FAN!"