In 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)
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
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)
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)
Good example of Pentecostal worship style
10/12/2016 Pat Barrett Add CommentThis video captures the spirit of the Pentecostal worship service I was exposed to. Notice, too, how many Whites in the congregation know how to (Continue Reading)
Racial profiling as a way of life
05/27/2016 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsJim has raised the possibility that perhaps my wife is consumed by issues of race. If you got to know her, you might see her (Continue Reading)
A Racial Rohrschach Test
03/20/2016 Pat Barrett Add CommentLife magazine, back when it was in very large format, printed an article on Dwight David Eisenhower, 34th President of the U.S. Included was a (Continue Reading)
Masked traits, their survival, emergence and absorption
03/11/2016 Pat Barrett Add CommentA terminological issue arises whenever we talk about the American culture. What so often happens is that what I call the Norwegian culture gets put (Continue Reading)
It’s not the color, it’s the relationship
02/24/2016 Pat Barrett Add CommentOBSERVATION: The Nigerian doctor my wife sees was telling her that people treat her one way until she opens her mouth and they realize she (Continue Reading)
Fox on Chicago – the Kelly File
12/30/2015 Pat Barrett Add CommentI just watched the Kelly File on Fox News from——————-. One would think I would put this under politics but it deals so directly with (Continue Reading)
From ’fire bell in the night’ to Michael Brown
12/12/2015 Pat Barrett Add CommentWhere does this immense fear of Black people come from? In the whole history of slavery in the thirteen colonies and the U.S., the slave (Continue Reading)
Race as an issue in one interracial marriage
12/02/2015 Pat Barrett Add CommentMany years ago my marriage was not only unusual, it was considered by many to be beyond the pale. In fact, eighteen states had laws (Continue Reading)
The values of a culture
10/21/2015 Pat Barrett Add CommentI’m watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw-tHBLMr4U&list=RDhcutiSjsUpc#t=3 So many things about it makes me recommend it to anyone seeking to understand the heart of African culture and its manifestations (Continue Reading)
Common item or cultural heritage?
06/29/2015 Pat Barrett Add CommentAnother insight into African cultural survivals vs universals: stilt walking. Stilt walking is practiced in many cultures but it is esp common in Africa, incl. (Continue Reading)
Smearing other folks’ religion
05/09/2015 Pat Barrett Add CommentOne night many years ago I was dumb-founded to hear Martin Sheen discussing his movie, The Believers, not in dramatic terms but in religious terms, (Continue Reading)
Recognition from afar in space and time
04/29/2015 Pat Barrett Add CommentDo you remember how I said my wife had been raised in such deep African-American culture that when I’d play some ancient old blues that (Continue Reading)
Dignity in a specific context
03/11/2015 Pat Barrett Add CommentRecently in Unbroken I read about dignity and posted on it. Today in church it hit me that that was what so much of the (Continue Reading)