Anti-maskers showed up at a Trader Joe’s to demand entry sans mask. The manager said no. They argued, saying they were there just to shop, (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
Listen To Donny Deutsch!
12/08/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentOn Morning Joe on Dec. 7, 2020, Donny Deutsch made an extremely clear statement. Joe passed over it because I believe he still has trouble (Continue Reading)
Let Me Tell You How Brilliant Isabel Wilkerson Is…..
12/07/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentFor years I have been bugged by the way people cast blame for a systemic problem on one individualized person or institution. On the listservs, (Continue Reading)
Buried culture
11/23/2020 Pat Barrett 3 CommentsWhen I attended a human relations camp (Anytown) in the 70s as an advisor, I found that “culture night” consisted of sorting the various ethnic (Continue Reading)
How can I show you?
10/31/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentVery often, statements of conditions are challenged. For instance, the Atlantic had an article titled How America Outlawed Adolescence. Without finishing the article, my thoughts (Continue Reading)
The Truth of Cultural Exposure
08/06/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn my household right now we have 4 levels of cultural exposure. My wife was raised in a Black Pentecostal church, came from a small (Continue Reading)
Discomfiting reaction to a documentary.
07/10/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentTremaine Lee took us on a trip through the Confederate South in his documentary and afterwards Carolyn Randall Williams commented on the documentary. At many (Continue Reading)
You’re OK until they see your house
07/10/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentA woman on Tremaine Lee’s show about his trip through the Confederate South told of how her father was lynched. The local newspaper just put (Continue Reading)
Were they funny or was it just us?
07/10/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentOnce in a while, an old comic line from the 50s hits my brain: Why-y-y-y-y Not?? What the hell was so funny about that? Yet (Continue Reading)
Reactions to Protest
07/07/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentAt this time of apparently endless protest against not only police brutality, the spark, but against an entire unjust, uneven, unequal system of racial oppression, (Continue Reading)
Culture gets passed on, like it or not
07/05/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn these pages I often stress the persistence of African cultural traits in the New World. Those traits came from Africans brought here during the (Continue Reading)
BBQ
06/29/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentThis quote from the Zocalo Public Square:The final key factor that tied barbecue to Independence Day celebrations in the South was the key role of (Continue Reading)
How a Colonial Perspective Works
05/08/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentMusicology in the West has relegated popular music to the non-serious realm. Therefore, African scholars, branded and sanctioned by metropolitan universities and departments of musicology, (Continue Reading)
Anthropological pitfalls
03/31/2020 Pat Barrett 1 CommentTrying to understand another culture is an amazing adventure. I have never lived in another culture other than my adjustment to African-American culture coming from (Continue Reading)
cowbell as cultural memory
03/28/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentReading 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)
Dukes of Hazard Redux
09/18/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentComedians make jokes about Red Necks. Black comedians make jokes about Black people and White comedians do so very carefully. As ethnic groups integrate into (Continue Reading)
So you think you’re not prejudiced?
04/10/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentBeing married to a Black woman for 55 years about often gains me a pass on racial prejudice as a White man. Wrong. Just today (Continue Reading)
Further notes on how words’ meanings affect thinking
03/20/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentA while back I wrote: “Again I heard a speaker use the term “urban” as a synonym for Black in the ethnic sense. Earlier, the (Continue Reading)
Why it’s a good idea to have diversity in your work force
01/28/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentMany years ago I heard a report on the radio of a rookie baseball player socking his manager. It was reported that the team was (Continue Reading)
The Tony Brown story
08/18/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn the Magnum Opus I told the story of the Black Republican event where Tony Brown of Tony Brown’s Journal was speaking. Steak and chicken (Continue Reading)
butt-shaking
08/15/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentSome time back I posted a url of a gospel group of West African women shaking their behinds. That was in response to a very (Continue Reading)
A good example of conflict in cultural styles
08/15/2018 Pat Barrett Add Commenthttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGyPo5Mwoq0&feature=related This is a Christian group singing a Christian song. You know how a lot of Christians in the U.S. would view the butt-shaking that (Continue Reading)
I can’t believe I missed this cultural nugget
08/15/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentNowhere can I find a write-up on this blog about a friend who exhibits cultural dexterity (a term I got from Sheryll Cashin, author of (Continue Reading)