Reading Sam Floyd, my suspicions rise over terms like “cultural memory.” I recall a disturbing conversation with a Prof. Woods, chairperson of the art department (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
My new Web site
Panda Bear
08/15/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentWe wonder at times how our grandchildren navigate their biraciality. They live in the East Valley of Maricopa County, Arizona, one of the reddest parts (Continue Reading)
Compare Calabar recitation to Havana homenaje
07/28/2019 Pat Barrett Add Comment
A historian describes my city in the 1950s
07/20/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentLike many emerging American cities at the time, Phoenix’s spectacular growth did not occur evenly. It largely took place on the city’s north side, a (Continue Reading)
Tension between immigrants and African-Americans
07/11/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe American immigrant story has a foil, African-Americans. Our first encounters with this go something like Uncle Harry telling of his grandfather who came to (Continue Reading)
Dramatic evidence of who made the changes in America
12/23/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn Michelle Obama’s new book she has two class pictures, one of her kindergarten class and one of her first grade class in a school (Continue Reading)
The centrality of music to the Black religious experience
12/10/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentI’m sure I’ve written up this incident here before but cannot find it. It points to the centrality of music and esp of rhythmic music (Continue Reading)
School perspective on Black culture
08/03/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe general opinion among Whites is that Black culture is something Blacks can study as a separate issue while the general study of the U.S. (Continue Reading)
Untangling Police-on-Black violence
07/26/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe reasoning that goes on behind the shootings protested by Black Lives Matter seems shallow. Why does the story run so often along these lines: (Continue Reading)
A provocative thought about the African diaspora in the U.S.
05/28/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentNicholas Lemann’s The Promised Land posits a connection between the so-called underclass of the Northern ghettos and the impoverished share-croppers of the deep South who (Continue Reading)
The Diaspora Comes Full Circle
05/21/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle this weekend in Great Britain marks a point on the circle of the African slave trade if (Continue Reading)
Letter to a friend re the Magnum Opus and unbroken transmission
03/22/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentAnyway, I wanted to force on you some more stuff I’ve come across recently which supports the thesis of my Magnum Opus, which is that (Continue Reading)
Lucy and the football – Af-Am version
01/11/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn Generations of Captivity, Berlin describes the jubilation of free people of color in the Lower Mississippi Valley when that region became part of the (Continue Reading)
Another memorial service with a twist
12/18/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe man was 97 years old, had been in CCC and the military in WW II. He started a business and was the first Black (Continue Reading)
Is This Cherry-picking?
12/17/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentWhen you develop a grand theory, you like to find supporting evidence. The trick is to avoid looking ONLY at items that support your (Continue Reading)
Racism without malice
10/29/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentLast night we went to the ASU football game. I am not a sports fan but my wife had to be peeled off the ceiling (Continue Reading)
This looks good and I’m about to start on it……….
09/12/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentTa-N3hisi Coates has a new article in the Atlantic about Trump’s presidency being a negation of Obama’s. Just a glance at Greg Sargent’s resume of (Continue Reading)
Observing the links between Africa and New World worship
06/25/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentAt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Y0EgnLznA you can see a good example of the sort of worship service typically called holiness. The video recalls to me many, many evenings (Continue Reading)
What are they afraid of? This.
05/20/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentHere you see the combination of music and dancing in huge crowds, dancing with abandon and a lot of sexuality and some fighting, that scares (Continue Reading)
Why they hate them
04/30/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentI just watched a show on the Smithsonian Museum of African-American culture and as I watched the Obamas rap along with the rappers and Michelle (Continue Reading)
Running commentary April 2017
04/20/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentA new category eclipsing my commentary on the presidential campaign. As I sit 5 hours a night and 4 or more on the weekends watching (Continue Reading)
Full circle
04/17/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentFull circle Saturday my wife went to hear her cousin speak in a church. She hadn’t been in that church in 53 years; it was (Continue Reading)
My Negro check
11/28/2016 Pat Barrett Add CommentI really need to stay away from the comments section of the blogs and columns I read. OTOH, many comments show perceptiveness and a good (Continue Reading)