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(ThyBlackMan.com) There are moments when history reaches across the centuries with startling clarity. Standing in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, Italy, and looking at Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s “Allegory of Good and Bad Government,” I had one of those moments. Nearly 700 years old, the series of fresco paintings includes a depiction of a bustling city that illustrates the effects of good government, as well as representations of the decay that results […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) Sit in any barbershop long enough and you will hear a young man’s whole character decided over the hum of the clippers. Russell Wilson got decided in mine years back, and the ruling came down the same every time somebody said his name. Soft. Too polished, too churchy, grinning like the country had never once pressed its knee to his neck. My uncle would wave a hand at the […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) During a press conference following his July 7 meeting with Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan, U.S. President Donald Trump calmly raised a military technology issue that eight years ago triggered a major NATO alliance political quarrel. Trump told the press gaggle his administration just might sell NATO member and reliable U.S. ally Turkey the F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter. This is not an arcane dispute. It wasn’t arcane in 2019 […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) I was wondering what boogeyman or boogeymen, what mysterious, fake non-existing evil the current occupant of the White House and Republicans were going to unleash on American voters running up to the consequential 2026 midterm elections. In 2024 Republicans and their ringmaster were utterly effective in having a significant number of Americans believe the fairy tale of open borders and the hordes of brown people invading, raping, robbing and […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) Some deaths arrive with their circumstances already settled, and a community can mourn them cleanly. Others arrive with a hollow place at the center, where certainty ought to sit, and that hollow is where the trouble begins. The loss of an eighteen year old named Nolan Xavier Wells, of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, is the second kind. I will admit I have not been able to stop thinking about his […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) Everything about President Donald Trump’s Independence Day-eve speech at Mt. Rushmore was a much-unneeded reminder that the personification of crude, self-glorifying narcissism occupies the White House as we celebrate our 250th birthday. He chose the venue to suggest, not subtly, that he deserves to be etched on a mountainside along with — God help us – former Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln, rather than, say, incarcerated. Trump […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) A person reaches an age where he stops performing for the world and simply tells the truth. I am at that age now. So understand that I am not writing to you from some high place, like I have it all worked out. I spent the better part of my years measuring my worth against the wrong things, and I would rather you hear this from me than learn […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) As America marks its 250th birthday, millions of Americans are celebrating the greatest experiment in self-government the world has ever known. Yet for others, particularly within segments of the African American community, Independence Day remains a reminder of our nation’s original failures rather than its extraordinary progress. There is no denying our history. Slavery was evil. Jim Crow was unjust. Racism has left scars that are still felt today. […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) As a Black man in America, if I were placed on trial for a major crime such as first-degree murder and knowing I was totally innocent, it would be impossible for me to forget the long criminal justice history of this nation, particularly when it resulted in the incarceration and sometimes execution of Black men who did not commit the alleged crime. Therefore, my freedom and entire future would […]

(ThyBlackMan.com) Ever heard the phrase “Just turn a blind eye?” Well, what exactly does that mean and what is the effect of having turned it? To turn a blind eye simply means to overlook some infraction or injustice that to the onlooker may not be that significant. It implies to see only what you want to see. Unfortunately, this has been the mode of operation during the past several decades […]