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(ThyBlackMan.com) Americans seeking inspiration during this anniversary of independence should turn away from the nation’s capital, where Donald Trump’s narcissistic celebration provides only national embarrassment (and perhaps a few laughs). They can look instead to the World Cup, where the performance of the U.S. Men’s National Team is renewing the patriotic pride and national solidarity of a free people — led by players whose diversity and citizenship stand against the […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) For adults of a certain age, one of the best memories of childhood was playing sports with friends in the neighborhood. Whether it was baseball, basketball, football, or soccer, it was an afterschool and weekend venture for so many kids growing up to play numbers of sports with their peers. For adult sports fans now, playing sports as a kid helped spark their eventual fandom of sports teams and […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) When I first began flipping houses, I did not have an elaborate marketing department, a massive mailing budget, or a complicated lead-generation system. Much of the business was built by getting in the car, driving through neighborhoods, and paying attention. This strategy is commonly known as “driving for dollars.” It involves looking for properties that may need repairs or appear to have been neglected. Common signs include overgrown landscaping, […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) There’s a way of measuring a leader that never shows up in the ledgers. Not in the bills passed or the votes counted. I’m talking about bearing. The thing that comes out of a person when the floor drops out from under a whole country and everybody turns at once to see how the one in charge is going to hold up. I’ve watched a fair number of presidents […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) “In 1956, I shall not go to the polls. I have not registered. I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no “two evils” exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say. There is no third party. On the Presidential ballot in a few states (seventeen in 1952), a “Socialist” […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) We asked a child to be a miracle. Not a good performer, understand me. A miracle. Every night, in every arena, under lights hot enough to sweat the paint off his face, thousands of grown people decided before the first note dropped that Michael Jackson owed them something close to salvation. That man handed it over again and again, until the handing scraped him hollow. My mama had Off […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) Los Angeles has long been a city defined by its contrasts, from its gleaming coastline to its sprawling inland neighborhoods, from its world-class cultural institutions to communities still working toward greater opportunity. At the center of that ongoing transformation is something deceptively simple: access to a quality education. Across the city, schools are doing more than teaching reading and mathematics. They are anchoring neighborhoods, inspiring civic participation, and giving […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) Most cats find a sound and ride it till the wheels come off. They stumble onto something that works, the crowd claps, the checks clear, and they spend the next thirty years doing a slightly tired version of the thing that made them. Can’t blame them either. Comfort is a warm blanket, and the industry pays you to stay under it. Miles Davis looked at that blanket and set […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) He still hasn’t given up. In the wake of the 6-3 decision of the Supreme Court tossing out his Executive Order abolishing birthright citizenship, President Donald Trump was back at it, insisting that Congress should act. He cared enough about the case that he took the unprecedented step of attending the oral argument. But he brushed off the historic loss in the Court. He posted on Truth Social: “The […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) Congress loves to wrap legislation in the language of the public interest. This year’s surface transportation reauthorization bill is no exception. Supporters describe the House Transportation Committee-passed package as a major safety bill designed to make America’s transportation system more secure and efficient. Beneath their rhetoric lies the familiar Washington story of a bill shaped less by evidence than by the demands of organized interests. Perhaps the clearest example […]