Commentary

I see culture as fluid and history as an expanding people map, moving through interaction and the creation of rituals and customs to mark a civilization’s expanding territories in time.

Cultural education, production and curation is critical at every level. And that extends to every level of cultural, social, spiritual, healthy, economic and political engagement of all communities at the serious strategy level.

In culture, the wars in fields, cities or in words matter. On the one hand, there is a need for culture to resonate, to project, to be in demand, like a hit or a new fashion statement or a local protest movement.

Dear Justice Thomas: I am writing you and not the other Supreme Court Justices who now form your “pack” [of conservatives] because they could never understand what it means to be Black in America, but I know you have before.

Black music culture, with all of our literature, scholarship, poetry, visual arts, paintings and dance, is a treasure of incrediblea value and human achievement at every level.

Caitlin Clark is considered the new face of the WNBA. Every one of her games has been sold out. The young woman is box office magic. But why?

On March 29, 2024, Beyoncé released “Cowboy Carter,” a 27-track recording that she claims is not a country genre record, but a new Beyoncé record just “rooted in country.” America is our country. Black music is our music, and country music is our music, too.

My friends in the Boston legal community were shocked when I announced I’d be retiring from what many of them considered a dream job: Judge of the Superior Court of Massachusetts.

I was at Claudine Gay’s inauguration as Harvard’s 30th president. I saw her family waving Haitian flags. I stood between a college administrator from Japan, there to celebrate her, and two Stanford faculty who taught her. Literally, the world watched Gay at the apex of her career.

In the weeks since the celebrated “Battle of Montgomery” on a riverfront dock, Black people have released a torrent of creative cultural production — comedic reenactments of the racially tinged fight, commentaries and sound effects edited into the videos of the conflict and, of course, hundreds of memes.

The six Supreme Court justices who last week struck down affirmative action in college admissions ignored America’s legacy of slavery and segregation, while the three dissenting justices, all of whom are women, recognized this history of slavery and its continuing effects in colleges.