Jason Parham
Gawker
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Past articles by Jason:
(H)afrocentric is a comic featuring four disgruntled undergrads of color and their adventures at Ron
(H)afrocentric is a comic featuring four disgruntled undergrads of color and their adventures at Ronald Reagan University. → Read More
The Safety Myth About Black Colleges
In recent weeks, calls for widespread institutional change at some predominantly white colleges and universities have captured the nation’s collective attention. On one side, free speech fundamentalists at schools like UCLA, Yale, and the University of Missouri insist that one’s First Amendment right outweighs issues of racial insensitivity. Nobody ever guaranteed a hostile-free learning… → Read More
Author Umberto Eco Plots What, Exactly?
Umberto Eco’s first new novel in five years, Numero Zero, weighs in at 192 pages, versus 400+ for his previous efforts. I’m pretty Eco-friendly—The Name of the Rose was a lot of fun, if a bit overlong—so I was looking forward to something like Rose or Foucault’s Pendulum, except shorter, tighter, and brighter. Instead, readers of Numero Zero will find a little mystery, a bit of fantasy, some… → Read More
What We Are Getting Wrong About Police Reform
Are there too many police or are there too few? In the months since Black Lives Matter activists first organized protests against police violence, the concept of over-policing has become key in understanding the dynamic against which they fight, especially in dramatically over-policed places like Ferguson. Some opponents contend that black communities are actually under-policed, citing rates of… → Read More
Nightmare on Main Street: On Racial Violence and the Problem of Convention
If this were a slasher film, one of the teenage protagonists, most likely a young girl running from a masked assailant who knew what she did last summer, would slip in the buffed and shiny halls of Main Street High, the camera zooming in on her screaming face as we brace for the inevitability of what will happen to her. → Read More
Black Children Must Comply
“What do you think I want, respect or compliance?” → Read More
8 Terrifying Books That Ruined Your Childhood
So often, when we look back on our formative years, the memories which scream loudest are the ones marked by fear, death, and adolescent angst. Some of these memories are grounded in reality while others, we’re told to believe, are pure fiction. Yet for many of us, the scary stories we encountered in the books of R.L. Stine, Stephen King, Alvin Schwartz, Anne Rice, and H.P. Lovecraft, among… → Read More
A Miseducation in Memphis
I was born in North Memphis, right before the Sears Crosstown closed. My upbringing was marked by two decades of declining employment opportunities and home ownership. It was also marked by scenes of violence that I cannot forget—scenes that pushed me to pursue my dream at all costs. → Read More
The Pain and Beauty of Field Niggas: An Interview With Filmmaker Khalik Allah
“This nowhere,” begins Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts in her 2011 chronicle Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America, “between dream and reality, between what one sees and what one imagines, between what is happening and your attempt to describe it, is the territory we wander while awake.” → Read More
The Matter of Forgiveness
The other day, I thought the unthinkable. → Read More
The Matter of Forgiveness
The other day, I thought the unthinkable. → Read More
The Matter of Forgiveness
The other day, I thought the unthinkable. → Read More
The Separatist Gospel of Louis Farrakhan
Washington, DC— “I have some hard truths to say,” Louis Farrakhan, the 82-year-old leader of the Nation of Islam, boomed. It was a cool October afternoon and he stood on the steps of the Capitol Building; an ocean of black and brown faces moved before him. → Read More
Killed on Holy Ground: Dispatch from a Sea of Blue
Memphis. July 17. A Friday. Carefree black boys call it a night. Darrius Stewart is just around the corner from his mama’s house when blue light hits the rearview mirror of the Chevy Malibu. A routine traffic stop. A simple thing. One week ago, Sandra Bland was stopped in Texas for a simple thing. → Read More
Inside the World of the Black Elite: An Interview With Margo Jefferson
In 1999 upon the publication of Lawrence Otis Graham’s Our Kind of People, the New York Times asked, “Is There a Black Upper Class?” On the surface, it was a foolhardy question—of course there was, and is, a black upper class!—but if you were to peel back its exterior, as Graham did in his book, underneath revealed a world of race leaders, men and women and children who were in a constant “state… → Read More
Deal: An American Story
He stared at me like he knew me. Like, if we lived in the same hood, we would kick it. We probably would. Hennessy is my favorite drink, too. → Read More
School to Dreaded White Girl on “Spiritual Journey”: Hell No
Caycee Cunningham, an 8th grader at Lincoln Academy in Utah, would like for you to respect her right to wear dreads. → Read More
The Summer of Simulacra: On Grey and Go Set a Watchman
On the day the calendar officially turns to fall, the only thing that needs to be said about the state of the novel is this: E.L. James’s Grey—from that time-honored genre of English letters, the shot-for-shot rewrite of an erotic fanfic of a series of young adult vampire novels—was the book of the summer. Which isn’t to say it’s good. → Read More
The Death and Short Life of Samuel Harrell
“There are a few things that people don’t know about my brother Samuel Harrell. He wasn’t just inmate,” Cerissa Harrell tells a group of nearly 50 prepared to blockade the Dutchess County District Attorney’s office on Poughkeepsie’s very public Main Street. Cerissa stands with Diane Harrell, Samuel’s widow. Hands intertwined, Cerissa continues, “Sam’s life was stolen from him. He was only 30… → Read More
The Gawker Review Weekend Reading List [9.19.15]
Wednesday night, before a national audience, presidential candidate and part-time comedian Jeb Bush—son of George H.W., brother to George W., and father to George P.—told a funny story. “There’s one thing I’ll tell you about my brother,” he said, referring to W’s tenure as president from 2001 to 2009,“He kept us safe.” Good one, Jeb! I’m still laughing. → Read More