Gangsta rap often reaches higher than its ugliest, lowest common denominator, misogyny, violence, materialism and sexual transgression are not its exclusive domain. At its best, this music draws attention to complex dimensions of ghetto life...

I have to constantly negotiate the tension between past neighborhood and present neighborhood.

Maybe this time around in reaching back to borrow from old movies, maybe Lucas or his people had trouble separating stereotypes from the sort of things that would help strengthen the movie.

In black America mother love is second only to the love of God – but just slightly.

(Jar Jar) seems to owe something to Disney characters. If you go back and look at cartoons from the ’30s and the ’40s and the ’50s, they’re full of racism. And it’s deliberate. And Dumbo,...

We are consistently looking for tools that can save time and redundancy in our research process. For this leading-edge project, we need to deploy and integrate systems that reduce intensity of human effort and provide...

There was something about his demeanor that suggested blackness and that suggested, more specifically, stereotypical blackness.

I think that I immediately knew that there were some stereotypical elements to this character that suggested black culture — the way he spoke, the way he walked,

it’s just a cartoon.

It’s a cultural phenomenon. So, saying it’s a cartoon doesn’t dismiss it, doesn’t denigrate it, it even makes it more powerful. Because why? Now it’s getting into the unconscious or the subconscious and the minds...

He was not hip-hop’s most gifted emcee. Still, Shakur may be the most influential and compelling rapper of them all, he was more than the sum of his artistic parts.

My father was not going to let me take over the business just because I was his son.

Political shenanigans in Washington have all but derailed interest in race, and I think that’s quite unfortunate,

It is very important for me to deliver my message to students and faculty at this great institution of American society because it is the ideas and thoughts of these young people that are going...

The leader of Jar Jar’s tribe is a fat, bumbling buffoon with a rumbling voice, and he seems to be a caricature of a stereotypical African tribal chieftain.

Ain’t no gay filter for the cash.