Category: Columns

by Ernie McCray

My mind stays
with thoughts
of Brittney Grinder spending her days
in a Russian prison faraway
and it breaks my heart
that so many folks are fixated
on how, on her part,
having a weed product
in her traveling bag
wasn’t very smart
which is true
but what good does it do
to throw shade

by Ernie McCray

Brittney Grinder.
WNBA superstar.
Sits in a Russian lockup far
from where she displays
her hoops wizardry
on the court with the Phoenix Mercury,
and to her predicament her coach says
“If this was LeBron James
he’d be home, right?”
to which I say
“Not likely,”
not with all that’s going on
in these moments in time,
a war of a kind,
between two arch enemies,

by Ernie McCray

Women have
lost the right
to protect the wellbeing
of their very being
but their struggle
will go on
because they know that
America’s promise of
“liberty and justice for all,”
as it is for dark skinned citizens,
is but a dream,
a dream that is forever sought
because they’ve fought for it
for centuries,

by Ernie McCray

We’ve got a court
that’s considered “Supreme,”
yet, it has trampled on women’s
hopes and dreams,
taking away their right
to have autonomy regarding
their health and their bodies
that go back to the previous century,
leaving their
granddaughters
and great-granddaughters
to face a reality
where they, might, someday,
serve time in the penitentiary
for bringing an end to a pregnancy,

By Ernie McCray

As an educator,
I can’t imagine
a more hateful idea
than banning the use of the word gay
in schools,
as there can be no better world
if children don’t have a basic understanding
of the world they’re presently in,
what it’s like
and how it became what it is.

by Ernie McCray

I can think of no better sentiment
than
“Love Our Children
More Than Guns”
and I can think of no better way
to display that love
than by enacting
a few rules and regulations
that protect them from guns.

by Ernie McCray

I’ve lived a life
trying to keep the spirit
of the Harlem Renaissance,
the Golden Age
of Black intellectual
and ethnic revival,
alive,motivated by parents who were infused
with the likes of Richard Wright
and Langston Hughes
and their world views,
growing up in a home
in tune with Black culture,

by Ernie McCray

My goodness.
Evil people slaughter
our children
and all we do is pray
and send loving thoughts
the survivors’ way
and TV punditry
airs it out
this way and that way
and the folks
we vote in
to protect us from such tragedies
suck up to the NRA

by Ernie McCray

Duke Ellington wrote
the melody to
and Ella Fitzgerald sang
the words to
“It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.”
And that has always
been my thing,
giving in to
the swing of things.
Like the other day
while my family

by Ernie McCray

Oh, what a world.
A world, that, too often,
seems like a nightmarish dream.
Makes me want to scream.
But there came a moment
when I turned my television on
and there, before me, stood Nanci Griffith
|singing “From a Distance,”
forever one of my favorite songs.

by Ernie McCray

I sat
the other day
as a dancer,
a Black woman,
moved her body and feet
to African rhythms and beats,
giving honor
to how Black arts
have enriched humanity
since near the dawning
of our species.

As she danced
a young aspiring White supremacist,

by Ernie McCray

It sometimes seems like our country is overwhelmed by lies, a mixture of little white lies and innocent lies, all the way up to the infamous “Big Lie!”

Now the Supreme Court has joined in, acting as though their plot to deprive women of the right to terminate a pregnancy, is protecting children, children yet born, by the way.

The lie here, another big one, is the implication that we, as a society, hold children dear while millions of them live among us in despair: