By Stacey Patton
First, I’d like to thank members of the Academy for not awarding a slew of Oscars to what New York Press film critic Armond White called “the biggest con job of the year” –Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire

By Eisa Nefertari Ulen
It is entirely fitting that the character that must risk the most in this film, and change completely, is a white dude. Cameron has explored geo-political realities facing our world that make the politics of color in this film work.

By Stacey Patton
Late last month my mentor, the great Pulitzer-prize winning historian David Levering-Lewis, invited me to be his special guest at the 100th anniversary celebration of the NAACP’s Crisis Magazine. A rapt audience gathered inside the New York Hilton Hotel’s Trianon Ballroom to hear Lewis and current Crisis editor Jabari Asim have a conversation about the magazine’s early years and its first intrepid editor-in-chief, W.E.B. Du Bois.

By Ralph Richardson
Spike Lee and John Singleton are great—and significant—but neither blazed the trail or overcame the odds that the Father of African-American Cinema did. Indeed, they owe their careers to him, though few of the folk who go to see movies today even know who he is, or that he, a black man born less than 20 years after the Civil War, was an innovator and major influence in American cinema.

By Grace Aneiza Ali
“Stories matter. Many stories matter,” said Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie in her speech on “The Danger of the Single Story” at the TEDGlobal 2009 forum last year. She warned against one-dimensional views and singular stories that often depict Africans as “fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves, and waiting to be saved.”

By Janet Singleton
Is the highest-grossing film of all time racist?

By Lee A. Daniels
There can be no denying that cable TV talk-show host Chris Matthews’ intent Wednesday night was to compliment President Obama on the forcefulness of his demeanor and the effectiveness of his speech during The State of the Union address.

But neither can one deny that Matthews’ choice of words not only undermined his intent, they underscored just how wrong is the notion that America has reached—or is anywhere near—a “post-racial” status.

By Ralph Richardson
Hey ya’ll, I’m back, this time with the Top Ten African-American TV Shows of All Time.

By Paula L. Woods
While the collaboration of Academy award winner Denzel Washington with Allen and Albert Hughes may seem like a case of strange bedfellows, it’s not as unusual as one might think.

By Janet Singleton
Black-themed works and those featuring African-American actors in the lead comment intentionally and unintentionally about the state of race relations for their time. By Barack Obama’s 2008 election, 2009’s crop of releases had been conceived and made. Yet certain ones incidentally whisper a sense of a new dawn; others are more products of the past. Here we will spotlight the historical celluloid backdrop of a swath of last year’s landscape of releases.