The first: the dump has been there for decades. The feds, the state, and the county knew about its existence and dangerous toxicity. Yet it took decades for the state to finally act on the clean-up and then only after it had been ordered to do so.

The second: environmental hazards draw major media attention almost exclusively when there is a perilous toxic hazard such as a massive oil spell, or chemical plant explosion. The other time is when environmentalists demand greater protection for plant and animal habitats or warn of the potentially deadly impact of the greenhouse climate effect.

The third. This is the most enraging. The toxin dump that the state was ordered to clean up was in South L.A. The residents almost exclusively are low income, African Americans and Hispanics. It fits a horrid pattern that has become all too familiar in recent years. That is giving short shrift if not a deaf ear to the complaints of Blacks and Hispanics about the threat of toxic exposure in their neighborhoods.

South L.A. is a near textbook example of this tone deafness on the hazards. In June 2026, L.A. County officials posted a map on its website of the areas in the county exposed to toxins. Two years earlier an environmental advocacy group did a similar study which it headlined “Top Hot Spots in L.A. County.” One of the leading “hotspots” was areas of South L.A. The hazard contamination numbers were eye popping. Air pollution, drinking water, and the ground water in the area all topped ninety percent. There was no indication that few and state county officials had implemented any special actions to mitigate the potential hazards.

The lack of official action on the problem tossed the glare on an ugly truth which has been quietly hidden for years. Chemical toxins and waste dumping in poor Black and Hispanic communities has a long history. A 1983 federal report found that three out of four toxic waste dumping and landfills in the South, for instance, were “surrounded” by poor Black communities.

Four years later another study reaffirmed the spread and impact of toxic waste dumping in these communities. It reiterated what by then environmental justice activists and increasingly a number of federal and state agencies acknowledged that “communities with greater minority percentages of the population are more likely to be the sites of commercial hazardous waste facilities.”

The issue by then had galvanized some Black communities in the South and now other communities of color in other parts of the country to act. In 1991, activists convened the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. In Washington DC.

It was not just poor communities in the South that were the sole targets of toxic waste, chemical and garbage dumping. But Native Americans, Asians, and Hispanic told of frightening tales of and cited examples of waste and garbage dumping in their areas. “The summit was about people of color taking charge of their destiny,” said one leading activist.

Environmental activists cite several things that the high contamination areas have in common. There are fewer regulations, weaker standards of enforcement and compliance and they were located near factories, landfills, or industrial sites. The residents are more likely to live near highways or areas where industrial waste is dumped. This virtually ensures that those continually exposed to garbage and toxic waste dumping will suffer far greater rates of asthma, cancer, and other illnesses due to constant exposure to poor air quality, contaminated water, or unsafe living conditions.

They note that the toxic chemical and waste dumping problem is neither new nor accidental. The apt label for this careless and ignored practice of toxic and waste pile ups in minority neighborhoods is environmental racism. The proof of the often official indifference to the practice is that it took more than four decades to order clean-up of the toxin dump in the South L.A. neighborhood.

Despite the mountain of laws, ordinances, and state and federal laws, regulations against toxic waste and garbage dumping, the use of these communities as dumping grounds has continued unabated. The systemic burdens of race, class, political, legal, and environmental threats present a toxic mix of higher-than-average illness and death to countless numbers of persons. That is certainly the case in South L.A. And state and county officials know it.

Written By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

One can find more info about Mr. Hutchinson over at the following site; TheHutchinson Report.

Also feel free to connect with him through twitter; http://twitter.com/earlhutchins

He is also an associate editor of New America Media. His forthcoming book is From King to Obama: Witness to a Turbulent History (Middle Passage Press).

Which is exactly why what Dwyane Wade has done with his daughter Zaya deserves a longer look than most folks give it.

Back in 2020, when Zaya was twelve, she came out to her family as transgender. The retired guard has told this story more than once, and the piece that stays with me is not the announcement. It is what he walked in on. His girl was hiding. Tucked into Gabrielle Union’s arm on a chair, too scared to speak to her own daddy. He has admitted since that he went and stood at a mirror to sit with one brutal question. Why was his baby afraid of him?

Sit with that honestly for a second. Most men would have gone straight to defense, blaming the internet or the school or somebody down the street. He turned the light on himself instead. What was it about his own idea of being a man, he started asking, that made his kid flinch? Then came the harder admission, the locker room talk and careless phrases he had tossed around for years. Where I come from, that brand of honesty takes more spine than a hundred loud speeches about being hard. Plenty of Black men never find their way to it.

Here is the part I want every brother reading this to really chew on. Dwyane has never pretended he entered this journey with every answer. He has admitted that his earliest public conversations were uncomfortable because he did not yet know much of the language or have all the information. And at no point did he use that uncertainty as a reason to pull away. He kept choosing love and acceptance while he learned.

That right there is the whole ballgame.

Somewhere along the line we talked ourselves into believing a good daddy has to comprehend his kid completely before he earns the right to stand behind them. That is a lie. Nobody figures their children out all the way. My own pops got maybe half of what I loved, and he loved me through the rest regardless. Comic books baffled him. My music he flat called noise. He kept showing up anyway, and the showing up was the whole message.

This man landed on the same truth, except he did it on a national stage with a crowd waiting to drag him. When his family posted a Thanksgiving picture with Zaya in it, the comments turned vicious fast. Grown people came for a child over nail polish and a crop top. He did not tuck her out of sight. Instead he defended his family publicly, and months later, while speaking about Zaya’s coming out, called her a leader.

Understand what I am not doing here. I am not telling anybody how to feel about being transgender. Grown folks can wrestle with their own convictions, their faith, whatever they have worked out about all of it. That conversation belongs between them and God. My point is narrower, and I believe it is a lot tougher to argue with. A parent’s love was never meant to arrive with conditions stapled to it. Nor was it meant to require you to sign off on every decision before you keep the door open.

Look at what this father actually did once he quit waiting to have it all figured out. He shifted into protection. Every single time his girl steps out the front door, he has said, the fear sits there with him, and not only over the usual dangers that keep any parent up at night. What eats at him is how the world looks at her. He later explained that Florida’s political climate was one reason his family no longer lived there, saying they would not feel accepted or comfortable. In California, they sought a setting where Zaya could breathe easier. Then he and Zaya launched Translatable, an online community for LGBTQ young people and a resource hub for the parents and families scrambling to hold them up. He took his own dread and shaped it into cover for other people’s babies too.

There was a dream he also had to let die, and I respect the way he owned it. A ballplayer is what he had wanted. Somebody to follow him into the league and carry the name. When Zaya’s road bent somewhere he had not pictured, he released that vision without a drop of bitterness. His line on it cut clean. Watch what happens, he warned, when you start making plans for other folks’ lives. That journey was never his to script.

Now look at where things stand. Last year that same young woman walked across her graduation stage with the Head of School’s Award in hand, her daddy beaming beside her and celebrating the moment online the way any proud parent would. Zaya headed off to college that fall. She has called him her biggest advocate and said he inspires her more than anyone else. A bond that opened with a terrified kid folded into a chair has grown into one of the steadiest connections you will find between a parent and his child. And none of it grew from him suddenly comprehending it all. It happened because he would not let his confusion cancel his commitment.

For Black fathers raising babies here in 2026, with the culture this loud and this split down the middle, the lesson costs nothing and shifts everything. Your son might pick a life you cannot even picture. Maybe your girl hands you something you own no map for. You are not obligated to solve it. Nobody is asking you to have the speech ready or the theology sorted or your feelings lined up in a row. You are asked to stay in the room, to listen when a lecture would come easier, and to keep learning long after walking away starts to look like the simpler move.

Dwyane has not claimed to be flawless, and he is not faking it now. He got scared. Fumbled plenty. Said wrong things before he found the right ones. What he kept doing was choosing his child over his own comfort, again and again, out in the open, where it cost him plenty. That is a blueprint worth studying. Not because he had every answer, but because he loved his girl the whole time he was still hunting for them.

Staff Writer; Lee Walker

This brother is a fitness trainer with 12 years of experience, focused on building strength, clarity, and real health within the Black community. Through his writing, Mr. Walker hopes to uplift younger Black men and men in general through honest conversations about fitness, financial pressure, fatherhood, discipline, mental wellness, and the importance of brotherhood.

Have questions? Reach me at LeeW@ThyBlackMan.com

Asked recently on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether he supports Medicare for All, Jeffries replied it is “not legislation that I am currently cosponsoring or that I support.”

In 2022, while seeking reelection, Jeffries wrote, “I have cosponsored the Medicare for All Act every Congress that I’ve been a Representative.” He entered Congress in 2013. His name appeared on single-payer legislation repeatedly, including the Medicare for All Acts of 2019 and 2021.

So, what happened? Did Jeffries take a closer look at the health systems of Canada and Britain, which the left insists America should emulate?

Medicare for All is marketed as compassionate, simple and “free.” It is none of the three. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that it would require $25 trillion to $35 trillion in federal financing over 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that single-payer plans would increase federal healthcare subsidies by $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion in 2030 alone.

How would Washington raise that money? There are not enough millionaires and billionaires to foot the bill. So now what?

CRFB calculated that financing a $30 trillion plan could require a 32% payroll tax, a 25% income surtax or more than doubling the national debt. Even doubling all individual and corporate income-tax collections would not fully cover the highest estimates.

Advocates insist that families would no longer pay premiums, deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses. But shifting a bill from an insurer to the IRS does not make it disappear — and does not make it free. Promising unlimited care does not create unlimited doctors, nurses, hospital beds or operating rooms.

Americans doubt Washington can keep its current healthcare promises. A 2025 survey found 80% of people not yet enrolled in Medicare worry that the program would not be there when they become eligible.

CBO warned that under single-payer, increased demand would exceed increased supply, producing more unmet demand. There is, however, a “solution” for this: waiting lines.

Look at Britain. The latest British Social Attitudes survey found only 26% satisfied with the National Health Service, while 51% were dissatisfied. Asked about NHS care over the next five years, 53% expected it to worsen — including 15% who said, “much worse.” Only 16% expected improvement; 29% expected it to remain about the same.

In England, the BBC reported in March that 16% of nearly 2,600 people surveyed used private care during the previous year, up from 9% two years earlier. Four in 10 who paid for care cited long NHS waits.

The wealthier the patient, the easier the escape. The survey found that 35% of those earning more than $108,000 used private care, compared with 10% of those earning less than $27,000.

At the time, England had more than 7 million cases on its elective-treatment waiting list. Roughly 2.5 million had waited longer than 18 weeks, and more than 100,000 had waited over a year.

Look at Canada. An Ipsos poll in 2025 found 56% satisfied with their provincial system. Yet a newer Nanos survey found 70% dissatisfied with the state of healthcare, and that nine in 10 want major change. The Canadian Medical Association acknowledges that about 20% of Canadians awaiting elective surgery wait more than a year.

Claude Castonguay, often called the father of Quebec medicare, declared the system in “crisis.” He recommended a greater private-sector role so patients could exercise freedom of choice. In 2009, incoming Canadian Medical Association president Dr. Anne Doig was more direct: “We all agree that the system is imploding.”

America’s system has problems: high prices, maddening paperwork, uneven access and too little transparency. Reform it. Increase competition. Expand portable coverage. Give consumers price information. Strengthen the safety net for those truly unable to pay.

But do not pretend government can abolish scarcity with a comforting name. Do Americans want taxes high enough to finance another $30 trillion in federal promises? Do they want Washington deciding what doctors and hospitals will be paid? Do they want British-style waiting lists and Canadian-style delays?

Jeffries apparently thinks not, too — at least “currently.” The question is whether he changed his mind after studying the costs and inconveniences Americans would not tolerate. Or did Jeffries merely change his answer — ahead of the midterm elections — after studying the polls?

Columnist; Larry Elder

Official website; http://www.larryelder.com

Perhaps the pivotal moment in the campaign came this week, when Sen. Graham stumbled badly on a straightforward foreign policy question:

“Are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States and if so, why or how?”

That’s not a tough one. The answer is yes. Lindsey Graham could go on for hours on that one. His sister didn’t even know enough to say yes. And she told everyone that.

Her answer: Foreign policy is “not my thing. She is, she stated, “not that informed on national security.”

She isn’t. The obvious question: what is she doing in the United States Senate?

She is there for one reason alone. Who she’s related to. Sometimes, that works out just fine. Lindy Boggs, the legendary Louisiana congresswoman, stepped into the shoes of her late husband Hale Boggs when he was killed in a plane crash and became one of the most powerful and effective House members. And sometimes voters just won’t buy it, as they did recently in not voting for JFK’s charismatic grandson, notwithstanding the widespread affection and sympathy for his family.

George Will wrote a famous column years ago about how when you’ve got a plumbing problem, what you want is an experienced plumber who knows how to fix it. Why is politics so different? At a time of grave danger worldwide, can we really afford leaders who don’t understand international realities?

After the debate, Graham’s opponent responded strongly on social media: “South Carolina deserves a Senator who UNDERSTANDS Foreign Policy.” An ad, showing her struggling to answer the question, will no doubt follow.

For her part, Graham went on Fox to try to defend herself. “I don’t speak politician — I was just honest. Of course Taiwan is our friend. But I think people in South Carolina are more worried about boys in girls’ sports.”

Do voters want their leaders to be open about their ignorance? Yes, of course, Taiwan is our friend, but China complicates that friendship in ways that challenge our relationships with both countries. A Senator needs to know more than a sixth grader.

And consider Graham’s defense. Do folks in South Carolina really feel more threatened by trans girls playing sports than they do by China?

They have absolutely no reason to. South Carolina enacted its Save Women’s Sports Act in 2022, barring students assigned male at birth from competing on female-designated teams at public elementary, secondary and postsecondary schools (and certain private schools competing against them).

In other words, South Carolina has already protected itself from a largely non-existent problem. When the issue was being considered in 2021, South Carolina High School League Commissioner Jerome Singleton testified that since the waiver procedure began in 2016, only four transgender students, two girls and two boys, statewide had requested permission to compete according to their gender identity; by the time the bill was passed the following spring, the League had approved one transgender female. One trans girl on a sports team.

Me? I’d be more afraid of China.

Written by Susan Estrich

That deserves a long pause. This is a brother who came up out of Charleston, raised by his mama on love and not much money. He built Hootie and the Blowfish with a few college buddies back in 1986, moved records by the truckload, then crossed over into country when plenty of folks swore a Black face had no business on that stage. Four decades of proving people wrong. Now, sitting on all of it, he says he might step away from the road in a couple years, maybe squeeze in another run with the old crew before he calls it.

None of this comes from somebody running on empty either. Lately he has spent time living and recording in London, cutting fresh tracks at Abbey Road, and looking ahead to life with his fiancée, Emily Deahl, with a Charleston celebration reportedly planned for February 2027. He even turned up at the American Music Awards out in Las Vegas back in spring, receiving the Veterans Voice Award and performing with Hootie and the Blowfish. New music is in the works, with another solo album expected to follow 2023’s Carolyn’s Boy. On every old yardstick he is winning. Yet he keeps catching himself, asking why he is pushing this hard at 60.

Here is the part that got me. He did not talk about being tired of the songs. Instead he talked about wanting to stay in the house. “I’m really starting to like being home a lot,” he said. Simple words. Grown words. The kind of admission that takes a certain age to make without feeling like you failed somewhere.

I want to sit a minute with the older Black men reading this, the ones who came up the way I did. We got taught young that a man’s value lives in his output. Provide. Grind. Never let them catch you slowing down. My father’s generation wore exhaustion as a badge of honor. Sunday held church and maybe a nap, then Monday rolled back around and you went and did it again. Nobody handed us the language for rest. Rest read as laziness, and laziness meant everything our people had bled to escape.

So we swallowed it whole. We measured ourselves by what we produced, then passed that same math down to our sons. Plenty of good Black men I know cannot sit still for an hour without guilt creeping in. Retirement scares them worse than any job ever did, because who are they if nobody needs a thing from them?

That is the trap Darius is quietly stepping out of, and I think he is holding a door open for the rest of us.

Consider what he has already earned. He raised his kids. His money flowed back into the city that made him, helping support MUSC Shawn Jenkins Children’s Hospital in Charleston, where a nursing scholarship now carries his mother’s name. Benefit shows for St. Jude. Service as a national chair supporting a museum honoring our music up in Nashville. The receipts run long. Yet the touring machine kept spinning, 110 nights in 2025, hotel after hotel. That same year, his voice gave out during a concert in Atlantic City, a reminder that even a legend has limits.

At some point you have to ask what all that motion is protecting you from.

It happens more than we care to admit, solid men reaching the end of a working life only to confront an emptiness they never built anything to hold. Decades they spent defining themselves by the clock and the paycheck, and when both went silent, they struggled to recognize the life waiting on the other side. Nobody ever told them a fishing trip could count, that a slow morning holds value, that watching your grandbaby figure out how to walk is no consolation prize for the career left behind. It is the prize.

Darius said he is eyeing one more big run with Hootie, and I respect that fully. He even wants their final show to happen at Williams-Brice Stadium, back in the state where the whole story began. A man gets to pick his own last dance. What moves me is that he is choosing it on purpose instead of running the road until the road runs him. There is dignity in deciding when you have done enough, rather than letting a schedule or your body settle the matter for you in some hospital hallway.

We ought to preach this in the barbershop and repeat it at the cookout. Our worth was not the thing we made. It was not the overtime or the second gig or the way we could outlast everybody in the room. Those things kept the lights on, and Lord knows they mattered. But they were the means, brother. They were never meant to become the whole man.

Scripture speaks of a season for everything, and I believe that down to my bones. There is a time to build and push and sweat, and there comes a time to set the hammer down and look at what your hands put together. Too many of our elders did not reach that second part. They died with the tools still balled up in their fists.

Darius has enough sense to feel the season turning. He notices the pull of his own front porch, and rather than shame himself over it, he honors it. That is not weakness. It is wisdom finally catching up to a life spent charging hard.

So let me speak to you plainly, if you are past 50 and reading this with your jaw a little tight. You are allowed to want quiet. Waking with no alarm and nobody tugging your sleeve can be a good day, a full day even. Traveling because the mood strikes, seeing your folks while they are still here, sitting on a dock with a line in the water and no agenda whatsoever, all of it counts. It counts as much as any promotion you ever chased.

The grind gave us plenty. It raised neighborhoods and paid tuitions and put pride in our chests when the world kept trying to snatch it away. I won’t talk down on the hustle. But labor was always meant to buy us a destination, and somewhere in the middle we forgot to arrive.

A country star at 60 just reminded us of it. You can love your craft and still be ready to head on home. Both can live inside one man. And when your day comes to lay it down, may you do it like Carolyn’s boy from Charleston, on your own terms, head high, heart already halfway back to the folks who love you.

Staff Writer; Lee Walker

This brother is a fitness trainer with 12 years of experience, focused on building strength, clarity, and real health within the Black community. Through his writing, Mr. Walker hopes to uplift younger Black men and men in general through honest conversations about fitness, financial pressure, fatherhood, discipline, mental wellness, and the importance of brotherhood.

Have questions? Reach me at LeeW@ThyBlackMan.com.

I understand where the feeling comes from. Truly. We watched him tumble down the board in 2025 while weaker prospects heard their names first, and plenty of us felt that fall in our own chests. Some of it looked foul. Yet there is daylight between having a brother’s back and wrapping him in so much padding that he can never move.

He is 24 now, smack in the middle of a 2026 battle for the starting job against Deshaun Watson. Second year in Cleveland, with Todd Monken running the show since he took the reins in January. The veteran got first crack at it. Cleveland’s second-year pro has been clawing to close the gap. None of that is persecution. That is a regular Tuesday in the National Football League.

Remember how his rookie run actually looked. He started the final stretch, went 3 and 4, tossed 7 scores against 10 interceptions, and his QBR settled somewhere around 18.9. Nobody calls those numbers a triumph. Branding them a scandal misses just as badly. They are a baseline. Green passers throw the ball to the wrong jersey. Peyton Manning threw a rookie-record 28 picks in 1998 and still carved out a gold-jacket career. Bradshaw? They booed him out of Pittsburgh early, benched the man more than once, and the rings came much later. Happens to the great ones all the time. They stink early, take their lumps in public, then figure it out. This league does not care what name is stitched across your shoulders.

Here is the part nobody wants to say out loud. A good chunk of the loudest voices online are not protecting the kid at all. They are protecting a storyline. If he sits, it has to be racism. Praise the veteran’s footwork and that becomes sabotage. Mention those 10 giveaways and a beat writer becomes a hater. So a competitor who by every account itches to compete gets frozen into a permanent victim by the same people swearing they love him.

That framing helps him not one bit. None. When you tell a professional that nothing is ever his fault, you are quietly informing him that he holds no power to fix a single thing. Sit with that. You strip a man of his agency and slap a bow on it and call it support.

I have coached a little, watched a lot, and lived long enough to recognize the pattern with our sons. There is a deep instinct among us to shield the young men in our lives, because the world has been swinging at them since forever. That instinct is sacred. It kept a whole lot of us breathing. Every good thing carries a shadow, though, and the shadow here is simple: a boy who never tastes a real consequence never grows into the thing he is chasing.

Losing teaches. Harshly. It mails its lessons collect. Shedeur needs to sail one over a receiver’s head on third and 6, feel that long walk back to the bench, sit in a dim film room on Monday while the tape freezes on a blown coverage read, then go repair it. That grind is how signal-callers get built. There is no elevator past it. Josh Allen handed the ball to defenses again and again before that light clicked on.

Deshaun deserves a fair mention too. The 30-year-old had barely seen live action since 2024 before this preseason, grinding back after rupturing his Achilles and then suffering another rupture of the same tendon that required a second surgery, riding a contract that finally runs dry after this season. Do not paint him as an untouchable monarch guarding the gate. Back nine of a career, the man is just trying to prove the arm still works. Should the younger option play better, that option starts. If not, the incumbent keeps studying tape and waiting a turn. Both truths can sit at the same table.

Preseason has painted a muddy picture so far. Against the Bears, neither guy grabbed the room by the collar, Cleveland ate a 34 to 10 loss, and the moment nobody wanted was a pass that nestled into the wrong colors. Then came Buffalo today, August 22nd, when the staff handed number 2 the whole first half, even though Cleveland rested most of its veteran starters and put him behind a second-string offensive line with mostly backups around him. Shedeur completed his first eight throws and finished 9 of 11 for 74 yards, one touchdown and one interception. Watson followed and went 5 of 12 for 35 yards with an interception as Cleveland lost 31 to 7. Shedeur was the better quarterback on this particular afternoon. None of that means the job belongs to him now. It means he got a fair look and did something with it.

Will he seize the job by September 13 down in Jacksonville? Maybe. Maybe not. Monken still has not named his starter, and Saturday gave him something more to chew on rather than settling the matter cleanly. Shedeur helped himself against Buffalo. Watson did not slam the door. Cleveland still has a preseason finale against New England on August 27, although the staff may make its decision before then. Fine. A clipboard is not a coffin either way. Aaron Rodgers waited 3 seasons in Green Bay. Steve Young studied behind Joe Montana and squeezed every drop from it. Waiting only wrecks a passer who chooses to pout while he waits.

What actually worries me is not the depth chart. It is the noise around it. A whole ecosystem now feeds off manufactured outrage on his behalf, because a wronged prospect prints clicks better than a developing one ever could. Each week they will dig up fresh insult. Maybe a snap count. Then some stray quote. Or a survey that placed him 35th out of 35 veteran quarterbacks entering the season, which, sure, stings, though who on earth cares in August.

The funny twist is that the young man himself seems to grasp all this. Ask about the derby and you get a shrug, plus a line about the only rival worth naming being the face in the mirror. No panic. Zero alibis. Healthier than half the folks defending him from their phones. So there stands a competitor, going hard, while the comment section litigates.

So my plea, from somebody who has watched this business chew up hyped prospects and lift overlooked ones in equal measure: turn him loose. Give him room to fail on a Sunday and answer for it at the podium afterward. A staff should hold him to a standard without anybody screaming for a firing. All of it, the sweet and the sour, is tuition owed.

Deion’s boy is not spun from glass. Locker rooms raised him. Boulder saw that program hauled across his shoulders, 4,134 yards and 37 touchdowns in a final college fall, so the glare of bright lights is old news. Our lane is not to fight his battles. His alone is to fight them.

Stumble, rise, repeat. That is the assignment handed to every kid who ever strapped on a helmet. This franchise gave him an honest shot this August. Against Buffalo, he took one more step toward making the decision difficult. Let the process breathe, and let the rest of us unclench and quit treating a plain old competition like some crime against the culture.

He will be alright. Just clear the room and let him work.

Staff Writer; J.G. Lacour

Covering the NBA, NFL, college basketball, college football, and Major League Baseball from a Black man’s perspective. He loves the full world of sports, but the NFL remains his favorite.

Need to contact this bro, feel free to use this email address; JGLacour@ThyBlackMan.com.

A review of common budget categories can show where your money went, but categories alone cannot explain what the spending was trying to accomplish. A purchase listed under clothing may have been an attempt to feel more confident. A restaurant charge may have purchased relief from exhaustion rather than food alone.

Emotional spending matters because money is doing more than paying for an item. It is being asked to change a feeling. The purchase may create a brief lift, but the original emotion often returns after the novelty fades. When this pattern repeats, temporary comfort can create lasting financial pressure.

The Purchase May Be Solving an Emotional Problem

Most emotional purchases have a purpose, even when that purpose is not financial. Shopping can create stimulation during boredom, distraction during sadness, or a sense of control during uncertainty.

This helps explain why telling yourself to “stop wasting money” may not work. The spending is providing something your mind currently wants, even if the benefit lasts only a short time. Removing the purchase without understanding the need leaves the original problem untouched.

Ask what you hoped would change after buying the item. Perhaps you wanted to feel rewarded, attractive, productive, included, or less stressed. The answer may reveal that the product itself was only one possible solution.

Once the emotional purpose is visible, you can look for alternatives that meet the same need without automatically creating another expense.

Shopping Can Offer a Quick Mood Shift

Buying something can be exciting. You search, compare, imagine owning the item, and complete the transaction. Each stage creates anticipation and gives your attention somewhere specific to go.

The Cleveland Clinic’s explanation of why retail therapy can improve your mood temporarily notes that shopping may offer distraction, anticipation, and a feeling of control. It can also engage reward processes that make the experience feel pleasurable for a short period.

That temporary relief is real, which is why the habit can become attractive. The problem is that the emotional benefit may disappear long before the bill does.

A purchase made during a stressful evening can remain on a credit card for months. The moment of relief ends, but interest, clutter, and regret may continue. Emotional spending becomes especially costly when a brief change in mood creates a much longer financial obligation.

The Reward May Begin Before You Buy

Sometimes the most enjoyable part of shopping is not owning the product. It is imagining what the product might change.

A new planner can represent an organized life. Exercise equipment can represent better health. Furniture can represent a calmer home, while new clothes may represent confidence or social acceptance.

The imagined future creates excitement before the package arrives. Once the item becomes ordinary, however, the promised transformation may not occur. The planner still needs to be used, the equipment requires effort, and the clothes cannot permanently remove insecurity.

Before buying, ask whether you want the object or the version of yourself connected to it. Then identify one action you could take toward that identity without making the purchase.

You might organize one drawer, take a walk, repair something you already own, or wear an outfit you have forgotten. The action tests whether you want the activity itself or only the emotional promise attached to shopping for it.

Stress Spending Often Purchases Relief

Stress reduces patience and makes convenience more appealing. After a demanding day, cooking, comparing prices, or delaying a purchase can feel like one more task you do not have the energy to complete.

Spending can remove that pressure quickly. Food arrives at the door, a problem is replaced with a product, or a difficult emotion is pushed aside by browsing.

This does not mean every convenience purchase is a mistake. Paying for help, prepared food, transportation, or entertainment can be a thoughtful use of money. The difference is whether the spending was planned and whether it solved the problem effectively.

If stress repeatedly creates the same expense, examine the system around it. You may need simpler meals, fewer evening obligations, clearer work boundaries, or a larger amount specifically reserved for convenience.

Cutting the purchase while preserving the exhausting conditions may only increase the chance that the pattern returns.

Sadness Can Turn Shopping Into Self Care

The phrase “I deserve this” often appears during emotional spending. After disappointment, conflict, or a difficult period, buying something can feel like an act of kindness toward yourself.

You may genuinely deserve care, but care and consumption are not always the same thing. A purchase can become a substitute for comfort, rest, support, or honest emotional processing.

This distinction is important because the item may not provide what you actually need. New shoes cannot resolve grief. A home accessory cannot repair loneliness, and an expensive meal cannot remove an unresolved conflict.

Before purchasing comfort, pause and name the feeling as precisely as possible. Sad, lonely, disappointed, anxious, embarrassed, and exhausted may require very different responses.

You may still decide that the purchase is worthwhile. The pause simply gives another form of care the chance to compete with it.

Boredom Spending Is a Search for Stimulation

Boredom can make online shopping especially powerful because stores provide an endless stream of novelty. Every page contains new colors, features, recommendations, and imagined possibilities.

The purchase may be less important than the activity of searching. Browsing fills empty time and gives the brain a series of small decisions. Once the order is complete, anticipation continues through shipping updates and delivery.

If boredom is the trigger, stricter financial rules may not be enough. You also need another source of engagement.

Create a short list of activities that are easy to begin when you feel restless. Include options that require little energy, such as taking a walk, trying a recipe, visiting the library, calling someone, working on a puzzle, or starting a small creative project.

The alternative should be accessible. A complicated plan will struggle to compete with a shopping app that opens in seconds.

Positive Emotions Can Trigger Spending Too

Emotional spending is not limited to sadness or stress. Excitement, pride, relief, and celebration can also weaken financial boundaries.

You receive good news and decide to upgrade the celebration. You finish a difficult project and reward yourself with a purchase. You receive a bonus and begin spending before deciding how the money should support your larger goals.

Positive emotions can create a sense that normal limits no longer apply. The purchase feels justified because something good happened.

Celebration deserves a place in life, but it works better when the amount is chosen before excitement takes over. Keep a list of rewards at different price levels or maintain a celebration category in your budget.

This allows you to mark important moments without turning every success into a financial setback.

Guilt Can Strengthen the Cycle

The emotional spending cycle often continues after the purchase. Relief may be followed by guilt, embarrassment, or fear about the account balance.

Those feelings can create another need for comfort. If shopping is already a familiar coping method, the person may spend again to escape the regret caused by earlier spending.

Harsh self criticism usually makes this cycle harder to interrupt. Shame encourages secrecy and avoidance, while curiosity makes the pattern easier to examine.

Instead of asking, “Why am I so bad with money?” ask what happened before the purchase, what relief it provided, and what the full result was afterward. This language separates the behavior from your identity.

You are not excusing the purchase. You are collecting the information required to respond differently.

Track Feelings Alongside Transactions

A bank statement shows the amount, date, and merchant, but it does not record your emotional state. Adding that context can reveal patterns that financial categories miss.

For several weeks, record unplanned purchases along with the time, location, and feeling that appeared before them. Also note what happened immediately afterward and how you felt the next day.

You may notice that spending increases after difficult meetings, during lonely weekends, or late at night. Perhaps certain social media accounts trigger purchases, or visiting particular stores leads to spending beyond the original plan.

Patterns make prevention more specific. Instead of trying to use more willpower everywhere, you can focus on the times and situations where emotional spending is most likely.

A Waiting Period Creates Emotional Distance

Strong emotions create urgency. A purchase can feel necessary now even when waiting would cause no real harm.

Create a waiting period for optional spending. A smaller purchase might wait until the next day, while a larger one may require several days or weeks.

During the waiting period, avoid repeatedly visiting the product page. Continued browsing can keep the emotional excitement active and make the delay feel like an extended sales process rather than a genuine pause.

When the time passes, ask whether you still want the item and whether the money is available without borrowing or weakening another priority. Some purchases will still make sense, and you can complete them with greater confidence.

Others will lose their emotional force. In those cases, waiting has protected both your money and your future attention.

Add Friction Where Spending Is Too Easy

Online shopping systems are designed to reduce effort. Payment details are saved, products are recommended, and checkout may require only one tap.

Adding small obstacles can restore a moment of choice. Remove stored card information, delete shopping apps, unsubscribe from promotional messages, and log out after using retail websites.

You can also keep desired items on a written list rather than in an active online cart. Review the list during a planned financial check instead of deciding during the original emotional moment.

Friction does not make spending impossible. It gives your slower, more deliberate thinking enough time to participate.

Create a Budget for Pleasure

A financial plan that removes all enjoyable spending can make emotional purchases more likely. Strict denial may work temporarily, but it can also create resentment and a desire to escape the budget.

Set aside a realistic amount for entertainment, hobbies, personal purchases, and spontaneous enjoyment. Spending from this amount should not require guilt or a detailed defense.

The boundary matters because pleasure is easier to manage when it has a legitimate place. You can enjoy something now while still protecting savings, bills, and long term goals.

A fun budget will not solve every emotional trigger, but it prevents the financial plan from treating all pleasure as irresponsible. That makes it easier to distinguish healthy enjoyment from spending used to avoid difficult feelings.

Returns Can Be Part of Repair

An emotional purchase does not need to become permanent simply because it happened. When the item is unused and the return policy allows it, returning it can be a practical form of repair.

Do not treat the return as punishment. Use it as a chance to review the pattern. What feeling influenced the purchase, and what alternative could be prepared for next time?

Also notice whether returns themselves have become part of the cycle. Some people repeatedly buy for the emotional reward while assuming they can send items back later. The inconvenience, missed deadlines, and forgotten packages can still create financial losses.

The purpose is to reduce harm while changing the process that created the purchase.

Compulsive Buying Requires More Support

Emotional spending exists on a wide range. An occasional comfort purchase is different from a persistent pattern involving uncontrollable urges, secrecy, serious debt, or major conflict.

A medical review of compulsive buying describes repeated urges and buying episodes that can lead to significant psychological, social, occupational, and financial problems. It also notes that compulsive buying may occur alongside conditions such as anxiety and depression.

When shopping feels impossible to control or continues despite serious consequences, budgeting tools may not be enough. A qualified mental health professional can help address emotional regulation, compulsive behavior, and related concerns.

Financial counseling may also help organize debts, bills, and repayment options. Seeking support is not an overreaction. It is a practical response when the pattern has grown beyond what simple spending rules can manage.

The Goal Is Not Emotionless Spending

No one makes every purchase through pure logic. Money supports comfort, identity, celebration, connection, creativity, and pleasure. Emotions are naturally part of financial decisions.

The goal is not to remove feeling from spending. It is to notice when a purchase is being asked to do emotional work it cannot complete.

A thoughtful purchase can still bring joy. The difference is that it fits your financial reality and continues to feel worthwhile after the emotional moment passes.

Pause long enough to identify the feeling, consider another response, and review what the purchase will cost beyond today. When spending remains the best choice, make it deliberately. When another action meets the need more directly, allow your money to remain available for something that will matter longer.

Emotional spending matters because emotions matter. Listening to them does not require obeying every urge they produce.

Staff Writer; Lou Jackson

Let me say this plain, and let me say it with love. You were never required to become Barack Obama to have lived a life that counts.

Understand me here. This is no swipe at the man from Chicago. His journey deserves every bit of the honor it receives. The law degree, the long odds, two terms in the highest office, that calm he kept while folks threw everything at him. He carried it well. What I am wrestling with is the quiet falsehood that slipped into too many of our hearts, the one whispering that anything less than history amounts to nothing.

Think about the men who raised you. Was your granddaddy president? Mine surely was not. He drove a delivery route for 30 years. Came home wrung out most nights. He would settle onto that porch anyway, and out came whatever the day had taught him. Watch people close before you trust them. That was his big one. A promise stayed a promise with him, even the ones that dug into his pocket. He had no patience for anybody who could not meet his eyes. Nothing the man ever said made the news. Somehow he built something anyway. And what he built was me.

Here is a fact the headlines rarely hand you. A landmark federal study based on data collected from 2006 through 2010 found that Black dads who lived with their children were among the most involved fathers in America on much of the daily work that actually raises a child, the feeding, the bathing, the reading at night, the homework, the showing up. Black fathers living apart from their children also showed strong involvement on several measures. The CDC says comparable figures are no longer collected, so those numbers should not be mistaken for new 2026 data. Still, the findings challenged a stereotype that had been repeated for generations. That old story suggesting Black fathers simply do not show up never told the whole truth. And right this minute, across your city, fathers are quietly doing the holy, thankless work of simply being around.

No cameras rolling. Not a lick of applause. That is a victory. Write it in capital letters somewhere in your mind.

Winning wears plain clothes most days. It looks like a man who keeps a job he does not love because his family eats from it. Sometimes it is a husband who chooses the same woman on the rough mornings, not only the sweet ones. Other times it is an uncle who slides a nephew twenty dollars and a straight talk about staying out of trouble. None of that trends online. All of it holds a neighborhood together.

We have to unlearn the habit of clapping only for the extraordinary. A boy watching his father honor a promise learns more about manhood than he ever will from a documentary about a senator. The old head at the barbershop who tells a teenager to pull his grades up is doing nation work. That deacon who fixes cars for widows at cost is doing the same holy labor. Greatness in our tradition was never reserved for the famous few. It lived in the many who simply refused to quit.

Hear me right, though. None of this is about telling you to play small or go sit down somewhere. Just the opposite. I want you to take that gift of yours and aim it at a target you can actually hit.

Here is where we truly need to grow. Too many of us pour all our political fire into the White House once every four years, then go quiet while the decisions shaping our daily lives get made down the street without us. Your school board helps shape district priorities, curriculum choices, and what happens inside local schools. City council decides which roads get fixed and which blocks get ignored. The county commission moves tax dollars from one place to another. Down at the statehouse, lawmakers write the rules on ballots, on policing, on the very ground under your feet. Those rooms sit half empty of us, and that has to change. In 2026, with the whole country pulling in a dozen directions at once, that kind of ground game matters more than it has in a long while.

You may never sit behind the desk in Washington. So what. Serve on a zoning board. Run for a seat on your local school board. Knock the doors down your street and get folks registered. Give the widow two houses over a ride to the polls come November. When the mayor holds his next town hall, be the voice in the back that will not let him dodge a straight question. Coach a youth team on Saturday. Show up to the county budget hearing where hardly anybody thinks to look, because that dull little meeting decides whether your park stays open. Win a county race, steer real money back into your community, and you have arguably done more tangible good than a thousand speeches delivered from some faraway podium. Statewide power gets built the same way, one county and one district at a time, by Black men willing to do the slow work between elections.

The ones getting this right already walk among us. Look at the mayors quietly running major cities, the organizers building strength all year round in places like Chicago and Mississippi rather than waking up only for the presidential contest. They grasped a truth all of us need. Power that changes your street lives close to home, not a thousand miles up the road.

So grade yourself by a wiser ruler. Can your children count on you? Is your word still worth something when nobody is watching? Are the young ones around you steadier because you exist? Has your corner of the world grown a little more just because you refused to sit on your hands? Those questions carry far more weight than any comparison to a leader whose road was never meant to be yours.

Barack earned his page in history, and we thank God we lived to see it turn. But his life was his assignment. Yours belongs to you. The daddy, the laborer, the neighbor, the mentor, the local official who lands on no magazine cover, that man holds up more than he will ever fully know.

You do not have to be him. Just aim to be a little better than the person you were yesterday. Kinder, maybe. Steadier. Somebody your folks can lean on when the roof starts leaking. Keep at it, one plain day and then the next, and I promise you this much, my brother. That life of yours will have counted for something real. It has always been enough. And it always will be.

Staff Writer; L.L. McKenna

Politics explained through the lens of justice and equity. Offering perspective that informs, challenges, and empowers.

One can contact this brother at; LLMcKenna@ThyBlackMan.com.

There are not many events in history that transcend the sport landscape and make a significant cultural impact. Muhammad Ali’s name change from Cassius Clay for religious reasons, Jackie Robinson’s integration into Major League Baseball, and Jack Johnson’s World Heavyweight Championship victory are a few of the more notable events that transcended sports and made an impact on the American historical landscape. Those events also incorporated the issue of a race at a time when it was an extremely volatile issue. However, one of the events in sports history that intertwines the issues of race and sport with the most controversy is the Black Power salute by Olympic medal winning sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos in the 1968 Olympics.

Before making history in political sense, Tommie Smith and John Carlos represented the United States in 200-meter track event during the 1968 Olympics. “The gold medal that Smith won in the 200-meters on October 16, 1968, was a spectacular athletic achievement. What followed after the race would stand as one of the most powerful images in sports and Olympic history.  As “The Star-Spangled Banner” began, Smith and Carlos bowed their heads and simultaneously raised a black-gloved fist, and the stadium crowd slowly but steadily booed and jeered in reaction. Smith remained perfectly still, while Carlos raised his head slightly. In terms of an explanation for their actions, in an interview with broadcaster Howard Cosell Tommie Smith clarified, “The right glove that I wore on my right hand signified the power within black America. The left glove my teammate John Carlos wore on his left hand made an arc with my right hand and his left hand also to signify black unity. The scarf that was worn around my neck signified blackness. John Carlos and me wore socks, black socks, without shoes, to also signify our poverty,”.

The 1968 Olympics occurred during a time when race was at the forefront of American society. The Civil Rights Movement was working towards ending racial discrimination and increasing civil rights for African Americans. This made racial tension within the United States a serious problem that extended into sports. Although the boycotts by Black athletes at the 1968 Olympics were a possibility in the eyes of the American media, they never were put into effect as although black athletes did participate in the 1968 Summer Olympics, two young black men would instead make a political statement that would last a lifetime.

Before Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf in the National Basketball Association during the 1990s, before Colin Kaepernick of the National Football League during the 2010s, there was John Carlos and Tommie Smith. The Black Power Salute at the 1968 Olympics is unarguably one of the most powerful images in sport of the last 50 years. However, it is its legacy outside of sport that will have a greater impact.

Staff Writer; Mark Hines

So here I am, doing exactly that.

Let me start with what cannot be argued. The Naples Republican won his primary on August 18th, and if he beats David Jolly this November, the 2026 race makes him the first African American ever to lead the Sunshine State. Only three Black Americans have ever been elected governor of a state in this country’s long life. Three. In two and a half centuries. Whatever you make of the congressman’s politics, and I have my thoughts, that number ought to stop you where you stand.

Now his story. Donalds came up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, raised by a single mother during the crack years, walking to baseball practice past whatever the morning left on the sidewalk. His mama scraped together tuition for Catholic school. He rode a one-way Greyhound down to Florida A&M and soon found himself struggling academically and financially, selling plasma with his boys, working odd jobs and calling home when the money ran out. Trouble found him young, desperation younger still. Then came church, then finance, then the Republican Party, and a rebuild into a congressman whose gubernatorial campaign raised more than a hundred million dollars and who had the president’s blessing.

That is a hard road. I will not let anybody pretend otherwise. The brother earned his seat at the table the old fashioned way, through failure and grind.

Here is the knot, though, and it is a real one. Donalds rarely centers the subject of color. He calls his adopted home a meritocracy, a place where anybody willing to work can rise. By his own telling he is a “Trump-supporting, liberty-loving, pro-life, pro-Second Amendment” Black man, and he seems to want that last part to sit as just another fact about him, no heavier than his zip code. He has acknowledged the landmark nature of what he is doing. Policy, he insists, matters more to him than pigment.

Which raises the question chewing on me since Tuesday. Does a fellow in his position owe something to the folks whose struggle made his candidacy imaginable in the first place? Or is winning while refusing to be boxed in its own quiet kind of freedom?

I go back and forth, honestly.

There is an argument, no foolish one, that the point of the marches and the beatings and the murdered organizers was to reach a day when a poor kid from Crown Heights could grow up to run a Southern state and talk tax policy instead of tragedy. From that angle, the congressman standing up there refusing to make his skin the headline is not a betrayal at all. It might be the destination. Wes Moore up in Maryland, a Democrat opposite our man on nearly every issue, likes to say his own milestone is “not an applause line.” Moore means the achievement is not the finish. It is the start of harder work. Different party, similar wisdom.

And 2026 has turned into a singular year for the whole question. Counting our congressman, a record eight Black major-party nominees for governor stand before voters this cycle, women and men, Democrat and Republican, most of them choosing to let the milestone speak for itself.

The other voice in my head refuses to hush, though.

Meritocracy sure is a pretty word. Problem is, I have never once set foot in the country it describes. My grandfather could out-work any man in his county and was still barred from voting in it. So when a politician stands up and swears the field is level now, that plain hard effort decides who eats, I catch myself wondering. Does he really buy that, or does he just need to, so he can sleep easy at night? Back in 2024 the congressman faced a Philadelphia crowd and said the Black family held together during Jim Crow. He later swore he never called the era good, only pointed to higher marriage rates, and I will grant him that clarification. Yet reaching all the way back to segregation to make a point about your own kin strikes me as a peculiar way to lift them up.

That brings me to the part I most needed to say.

A Black man is allowed to think for himself. He does not have to fall in line behind whoever the crowd says to follow. Being Republican is no sin. A free thinker is exactly what our grandparents bled for. So that trap where we decide there is one true way to carry this heritage, and read anybody who wanders off out of the family, I reject it, and I reject it hard. Clarence Thomas and Thurgood Marshall shared a complexion and almost nothing else, and both were, whatever you make of them, fully themselves. The Naples fellow gets to be himself too. He gets to favor charter schools and low taxes and a smaller government. And he gets to be wrong, in my estimation, without turning in his card.

Here is the one line, though. Vote however you please, argue with your uncle at the cookout till the ice melts, believe whatever your own mind leads you toward. Just do not run down your people to do it. There is daylight between an independent thinker and somebody who trades on tearing his community apart for applause from a room that was never truly his. The former earns my respect even in disagreement. That second kind breaks my heart.

So could Byron Donalds make history without ever running on identity? Sure. He might. The ballots do not ask a candidate to file his feelings about ancestry. And there would be something almost poetic in a son of Crown Heights taking Tallahassee on nothing but ambition and argument, proving the thing his critics swore impossible.

I just hope, if that morning comes, he remembers the Greyhound. The plasma bank, the overdue rent, the woman who sacrificed so a hard-headed boy might get somewhere. And that his personal climb and the collective climb of a whole people are not the same tale, though they surely rhyme.

A leader can honor where he came from without campaigning on it, and without ever running it down. That, to me, is the milestone worth making.

Staff Writer; L.L. McKenna

Politics explained through the lens of justice and equity. Offering perspective that informs, challenges, and empowers.

One can contact this brother at; LLMcKenna@ThyBlackMan.com.