Author: John Valentine

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According to a poll conducted by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation Black women were found to be the most religious people in the country. This certainly came as no surprise to me. It merely echoed a belief I’ve long harbored. The belief that women seem to have a deeper understanding of the […]

As to the races of men, successive epochs of terrestrial humanity, though they may co-exist, have each embodied and developed one of the psychic faculties the sum of which makes higher man. Realization of the faculty particular to a given race brings it to its peak, then, when a fresh human season starts the flowering […]

Why are we still begging in 2021? Why are we still defining ourselves by others? Why are we still begging others to love us… to accept us…. to validate us? Why do we need them to be us? Why do we need their certificates, their diplomas, their awards, their praise, and their accolades to feel […]

I started my writing career in the 70s and 80s. Those were the decades after the racial turmoil of the 50s and 60s. Those preceding decades saw the fight for racial justice and civil rights reach a crescendo of protests with marches, sit-ins, sit-downs, boycotts, and other actions designed to reach the ear of an […]

Sit down America. We need to talk. It’s time for some inconvenient truths about our nation and how the propagation of systemic racism and white supremacy encourages what we recently witnessed at our national Capitol. As more disturbing footage of the 1/6 Capitol Insurrection comes to light, many of us are having to face up […]

A DARK MOMENT IN HISTORY May 25, 2020… a day that will live in infamy. Of course, we all remember where we were when we first saw the excruciatingly painful video of the white Minneapolis police officer’s knee on the neck of a handcuffed George Floyd. We all watched in horror and disbelief as the […]

“I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions”. Gloria Neale Hurston. I, too, am an invisible man. And it doesn’t feel good. In 1952, African American writer Ralph Ellison wrote the critically acclaimed book “Invisible Man”. The […]

A recent article I posted called on black women to continue the tradition of our great grandmothers. The tradition of advocating for the family and putting the welfare of the community over self is central to the success of our struggles. The personal and cultural values those Fore Mothers instilled in their daughters imbued them […]

If we are to ever return to the prominence of our ancient ancestors and regain our status in the world, our love of our own culture must play a vital role. This culture is the culture of matriarchy. A culture where women are an equal and complementary part. A culture where our mothers, sisters, aunts, […]