Chicago Sun-Times

A kid is a kid, not a ‘Lil Soldier’

Thu, 26 Sep 2013 02:20:10 -0500

Our sons perish because too many adults have pre-assigned them with hopeless destinies, spoken and sealed by the names we call them.

My father’s death still haunts me

Thu, 19 Sep 2013 02:21:58 -0500

From an envelope, yellowed and tattered, emerge ghosts of my past. I sit in my office at home, having run across the documents it contains while on a cleaning binge. There is my parents’ marriage license — more than half a century old. Copies of a letter from the City of Evergreen, Ala. An accident report. A certificate of death. A hopeless letter from an attorney, an invoice for legal fees. I hold the papers between my fingers with a sense of numbness and also angst that I do not completely understand, even as my eyes discover details that I …

‘These are the sounds of the city’

Thu, 12 Sep 2013 02:21:25 -0500

Air brakes hiss in the evening rush hour fray. City buses squeak and squeal. The L winds around the track above Wabash Avenue, rumbling and roaring, steel on steel — drowning out conversations with a deafening familiar sound. And yet, it is music, of sorts, with a decidedly urban flavor — fluid and sometimes static, a resounding river of humanity. If I listen closely, I can hear the march of feet up and down the street — some more hurried than others. The horns of taxis are more conspicuous, even if less angry than the darting, blaring taxicabs of Midtown …

Excuse me, but ‘ratchet’ is wretched

Thu, 05 Sep 2013 02:22:50 -0500

‘She so ratchet.” “That hairdo was a ratchet mess.” Ratchet this. Ratchet that. Ratchet — as in Miley Cyrus’ performance at the VMAs. Ratchet. It seems to be the latest word in urban slang, spreading like wildfire, spilling from the lips of rappers, celebrities, kids and even adults, all with a sense of hipness and embraced with a grin and a twinkle in their eyes. And I am convinced that Ebonics has sunk to a new low and seems increasingly to be trampling all over the hallowed ground of the English language, which seems to be spiraling toward the depths …

A message of hope from one who overcame

Mon, 30 Sep 2013 07:44:39 -0500

Musician Felton Offard chose to persevere — determined to make a good life, to rise above poverty and circumstance, to fulfill a destiny beyond prison and brokenness.

Changed by writing about murder

Mon, 23 Sep 2013 14:30:55 -0500

Sending students out to immerse themselves in a story, in real-life big-city reporting, is one thing. But predicting whether the experience will in some way be transforming is tricky business. Perhaps one measuring stick may be the words of students themselves.

There’s no forgetting racism, slavery

Tue, 17 Sep 2013 07:48:18 -0500

I understand that we won’t always agree. The point of engaging in a dialogue or expressing one’s opinion, as I do in my column, is to exchange ideas. What one may consider to be whining, another may consider to be a heartfelt expression of their truth.

Don’t run from cops, don’t smart off

Mon, 09 Sep 2013 14:54:39 -0500

We wear the mask that grins and lies, / It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, — / This debt we pay to human guile; / With torn and bleeding hearts we smile … Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear the Mask,” 1895 It first starts happening when we are boys, around the time we stop looking cuddly. The end of the Gary Coleman phase, when the hormones kick in and we start looking like little men. My mom insisted that I carry ID, told me never — ever — to run from the cops. And I was never to …

‘I am not invisible. I am a shadow.’

Tue, 03 Sep 2013 07:02:13 -0500

“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe …I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me…” — Ralph Ellison, “Invisible Man” (1952) I am not invisible. I am a shadow. People react not to me but to the exaggerated image of me, to the two-dimensional shadow that is every black man. That is why white people with whom I have worked, people with whom I have laughed and joked and traded stories, have sometimes passed me on the street and not recognized me. Out of context, out …

Confronting the enemy within

Mon, 26 Aug 2013 16:18:54 -0500

Where do we go from here? Amid marches for justice for Trayvon Martin, amid cries for justice for one, the headlines still scream bloody murder for many: “Man shot to death in West Pullman garage.” “Six dead, 22 wounded in weekend gun violence.” The children still die. Their blood cries. Gunshots crack, like thunder, on summer days. And peace and safety in some Chicago neighborhoods, mostly poor and black and brown, is a game of cat and mouse. No Zimmerman to blame here. It is us, mostly. Us. And yet, “we” generally fail to confront the enemy within. An enemy …

Raising a son in Trayvon’s America

Mon, 19 Aug 2013 15:46:39 -0500

What will I teach my son? What, amid the bitter cold realities of growing up as a black boy in Trayvon Martin’s America, where the hue of his skin is his only sin? In one America, black, where my son’s race and gender can make him a murderous target of boys who look just like him, and the other America, white, in which black males are presumed guilty until proven innocent, expendable on sight — whenever fear, suspicion and hate over them furiously percolate. In a world where my son, now 11, soon will be perceived as menace, suspect, …

Face facts: Deadly violence isn’t a ‘conspiracy’

Mon, 12 Aug 2013 11:37:12 -0500

‘As for my people, children are their oppressors . . .” Isaiah 3:12 Conspiracy? If this homicidal scourge that stains our streets red with the blood of my people is a conspiracy, then we, African Americans, must be at least co-conspirators. For the eyes of these urban assassins are brown. The finger most often wrapped around the trigger, some shade of brown. And the eyewitness accounts? Usually, they point to a young black male gunman seen fleeing the murder scene. Bullets. Bodies. Blood and tears. Some cry conspiracy. I have heard it, blowing like the wind. Musings that the Klan …

Letter from prison: ‘Don’t be a thug’

Mon, 05 Aug 2013 18:20:52 -0500

A letter from prison arrived from one of my 555,300 black brothers incarcerated across America. Postmarked March 25, from the Nebraska Department of Corrections, the white envelope was inscribed with an inmate’s name and ID number in blue ink. He says he reads my column. “Although you and I grew up in the same era, we took different paths,” writes the man, sentenced in 2010 to 34 years for shooting a man. “Our communities need more men like you. You are truly trying 2 do your part. Your voice is powerful. I wish you would consider mentoring my son. . …

My mama knew she was not my daddy

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 07:35:16 -0500

Dear Mama, thank you, in the absence of my father, for teaching me to be a gentleman. Thank you for standing by my side. For comforting me as a little boy. For drying my eyes when my daddy should have been there but had long since abandoned ship. Thank you for telling me to stand tall, proud and strong. For teaching me right from wrong. Thank you for never insisting, even in stepping in to fill his void, that you were both my mother and my father. For if you had, I might never have come to understand the root …

Mothers can’t be fathers too

Mon, 22 Jul 2013 18:10:02 -0500

Ihad not intended to write about fathers again so soon. But dear single sisters who wished yourselves a “Happy Father’s Day,” in my best Maury Povich voice: “YOU are not the father!” I realize this is a sensitive subject. I have already encountered the wrath of some mothers pulling double duty in the absence of their baby daddy and who insist that they are both Mommy and Daddy. Really? I don’t see how that’s possible. If you are the mother, you cannot also be the father. For starters, it is biologically impossible. Still, I have noticed this trend on Father’s …

Good dads, hold your heads high

Mon, 15 Jul 2013 19:04:26 -0500

This one’s for you: For every man who is not just a “baby’s daddy” but a loving father. For every father who has faced and also endured BMD. That’s Baby Mama Drama. For every father who has endeavored to be there for his children, despite their mothers choosing to use the children as pawns. This one is for fathers who have had to deal with “bitter” women who see a man’s love for his children as a weakness to be used against him. Fathers who have been falsely accused, lied on, or withstood an ugly custody battle. Men who have …

Father’s Day deserves a little more respect

Sun, 07 Jul 2013 12:50:44 -0500

Now, hear this: No soap-on-a-rope. No power tools. No new socket set. Not even a big new barbecue grill. What? So I can spend all of my Father’s Day cooking? Uh, no, I don’t think so. Homey don’t play that. No weed whacker. No revolving necktie rack. No new underwear. Not a bottle of Old Spice, English Leather or a fish necktie. (Once, I got one of those. My rule is that if somebody gives you a gift, you have to wear it — at least once. So one evening, I wore it to a night church service I knew …

Her name was Frances: Another young Chicagoan, lost too soon

Tue, 02 Jul 2013 07:04:53 -0500

This is another in an occasional, yearlong series that looks behind the number of murders in Chicago. Not Jonylah. Not Hadiya. Frances. Her name is Frances. Frances Colon. She was 18. She was not just another nameless, faceless statistic in the incessant toll of Chicago murder victims whose blood pours over the city’s streets like rainwater. She was Dorothy Payton and Jose Colon’s daughter. Sister to Lizzie, Lorretta, Lalorrie, Selena, Dominique and Donice. A jewel to four brothers. Student. Friend. A young woman with dreams. She was remembered by tearful friends and family on a lukewarm Saturday in March, beneath …