Once, the night before I was leaving to St. Kitts for Christmas, our dog, Kofa, ran off. It was a terrible dilemma. Do I leave with him lost or do I miss spending Christmas with my family in St. Kitts? I discovered how much of a connection Kofa and I had as I got sick confronted with the decision. I ruffled false feathers when he came back saying that I might have killed him myself had he made me miss the entire Christmas vacation. Now I am confronted with doing just that. The quiet and... Read Full Story

Yesterday was our daughter’s first day of school! It marks the beginning of a whole new stage of our lives. She is now officially plugged into the public school matrix – in Georgia of all places. We will have to be hyper-vigilant to ensure that the beautiful flames of curiosity, inquiry, budding logic and self-confidence that all children have are not extinguished in her by the school system. It is a shame to have to view public schools in that way, but the reality is what it is. For so ... Read Full Story

My father in-law is a typically Caribbean man in a lot of ways. His “name” is Rugged. He is from the poor and black side of St. Kitts and grew up during the days when the English tricked a lot of Caribbean people into thinking that the closer you were to them in color, occupation and physical proximity, the better you were. He damned that whole way of thinking and came up with the distinctly Caribbean combination of poverty, pride, a burning respect for education and an impeccable sense o... Read Full Story

One of the things I found irritating about the brotherhood of police that lined up in support of Officer Crowley and their attempts to chastise President Obama was how crass they all seemed. They seemed like the very kind of crude police officers that would indeed engage in racial profiling and the kind that I would be afraid of. When one of them referenced the President’s signaling the history of profiling and police brutality, he brushed it off as “whatever the history may be,” we’re not ... Read Full Story

One possibility...Los negros en los Estados Unidos piensen que todo el sufrimiento y la injusticia es de ellos. El professor esta detenido y es una crisis nacional. El president se dice que la policia son estupido. Que lastima! Pero que paso con miles de personas Latino que estan detenido cada dia? Donde esta la crisis nacional? Donde esta la investigacion? Justicia es importante, pero no por los negros solamente.kamau Read Full Story

Skip Gates’ arrest is causing a flurry of angry discussion among black people and perhaps a flurry of quiet nodding of heads among white people. For black men there is no shortage of shared experiences. Nearly all black men have been held up by the police for one reason or another whether they deserved to be or not. If not, they have for sure been the object of derisive suspicion from whoever is behind the counter, looking out the window or walking down the block in the other direction. S... Read Full Story

Lately I've felt that I need therapy dealing with some of the challenges of parenthood – perhaps fatherhood more precisely. I have been taking my little girl to swimming lessons for the better part of a year. She swims at the Martin Luther King Natatorium which is in the backyard of the King Center in Atlanta. It seems a righteous place to learn to swim. She started off with a lot of promise in the beginner’s class with Miss Emma. She quickly learned the beginning skills and was ready to... Read Full Story

This house renovation project is bringing me closer not only to hard physical labor, but the danger involved in living as a Hispanic person in the United States. I learned today that one of the men that are working on our house was arrested last Thursday night. He was stopped at a traffic checkpoint and arrested because the name on the registration for the vehicle was not his own. These traffic checkpoints are set up randomly throughout the city to check people’s license and registration. ... Read Full Story

My wife and I are renovating our house. These days in America that appears to mean contracting with a white man who oversees the work of Hispanic men. That is what we’ve done. Our contractor oversees the work of Hispanic men but, he has distinguished himself in that he works alongside them. He does not oversee the work of several crews on multiple projects breezing between them in a spotless, scratchless Chevy Silverado. Since we have been in Georgia he is the very first white man – or a... Read Full Story

I ran into an older brother on Saturday morning that I hadn’t seen in some time. He is part of a group of older gentlemen, in their 50’s and 60’s, who used to walk/jog in the evenings and I would see them while I was skipping rope. The set of them always made a point to greet me and made jokes after asking my name, they decided that Kamau was too difficult so my name became Young Breh. When this brother greeted me in the morning it was as if we hadn’t seen each other in years. It was as ... Read Full Story