We’re familiar with the metaphor “thinking outside the box.” which means to think differently, unconventionally, or from a new perspective. But the metaphor presumes the box is serviceable.

Last month, Congress adjourned for its August recess, specifically the U.S. House of Representatives. They left town without extending, or even speaking to, the federal eviction moratorium. On the other end of Pennsylvania Ave., the White House was equally silent. This moratorium affected se…

When I write a column, I try to focus on an idea or event that is relevant to Black America.

There was a time last year that I believed it was possible that America was on the cusp of positive change, even during a surging pandemic and while Donald Trump was still President of the United States.

The Barbershop: Socrates, you’ve helped us understand something. White folks are always talking about American Exceptionalism and how American democracy is the standard that the world should aspire too. So why when their democracy is attacked like on January 6, or Republican legislatures sup…

St. Louis American columnist Mike Jones describes former St. Louis Councilwoman Hazel Erby, recently deceased, as a "ferocious champion" of the needs of the African-American community in this article, originally published on April 14, 2019.In the sixth chapter of Isaiah, God asks a profound …

The Barbershop: So, we’re gonna get into the why of voter suppression in 2021.

The Barbershop: Hey, Soc. Since you’re here, we wanna run something else by you before you get up.

The Barbershop: What’s up Socrates, how you doing? I knew you were due for a cut and was hoping you’d come through today ‘cause we been talking about some things all day and some of these Brothas asked, “When is Socrates coming thru,?” ‘cause they wanted to hear from you on a couple of things.

I want to extend on my “Is a next Civil War in our future” column published May 20.

After January 6th it would not be hyperbolic to say the United States is facing a political crisis of potentially epic proportions.

White America's Zombie past that refuses to die

I recently watched “Amend: The Fight for America,” a Netflix documentary that I highly recommend, and once again came to the conclusion that America has a race problem. Captain Obvious would say America has always had a race problem, though we’ve never really talked about it because we have …

This is arguably the most problematic, violable and dangerous time in the country’s history

America has only made one unique cultural contribution to the world, that’s jazz. Jazz is to America what democracy is to Greece. 

There’s a large bureaucracy that actually runs the city of St. Louis, the real job of the mayor is to decide where the city needs to go and determine the best way to get there, adjusting the course as required by circumstances.

As I watched the machinations of Donald Trump after losing, I thought about doing a column considering whether there are any limits of white privilege?

As we approach the eve of the MLK Birthday holiday these words from “A Tale of Two Cities,” Charles Dickens’ epic novel about the French Revolution came to mind: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … it was a season of light, it was a season of darkness.”

One of the things that happens when you write an opinion column is when you get to the end of the year you write something about what were the most important  events of that year, muse about what they meant and what they may mean for the new year. But I believe also when you’re writing in th…

You never get the right answers when you ask the wrong questions, and you always ask the wrong questions when you don’t understand the problem.

The title of former President Barack Obama’s memoir is “Promised Land,” and in a recent Atlantic Magazine he explained his reason for the title was he was not willing to give up on the American project. Despite his brilliance, his choice of the title and the Atlantic quote represents an exam…

Art philosopher Arthur Danto observed, “We erect monuments so that we shall always remember, and build memorials so that we shall never forget.” Art serves many purposes, but perhaps its most important is the memorializing that which must always be remembered.

White America, history has its eyes on you

On the last night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, Billy Porter reprised a song from the 1960s, “For What It’s Worth.” The song is better known by its iconic lyric, which seems to be as relevant at this moment as it was for the moment when it was recorded by Buffalo Springfield in…

I want to commend former state representative Joshua Peters for his commentary “Black politics in a time of revolution” in The St Louis American. Peters’ cogent insight into the emergence of new Black political leadership that will change the character of Black politics as an effect of the B…

Max Ehrmann reminds us in “Desiderata” (1927) that, whether or not it is clear to us, the universe is unfolding as it should. That thought came to mind when I saw that Joe Biden had selected U.S. Senator Kamala Harris to be the Democratic nominee for vice president of the United States. I di…

“This time feels different” might be the most repeated phase in America at this moment, and that’s because it’s true. This time does feel different.

America is obviously having a Man in the Mirror moment on the issue of race as the result of the police murder of George Floyd. In the ensuing three weeks we have seen multiethnic, multiracial mass protests against the system of American policing. These protests have not only touched every c…

When dealing with the political establishment, always remember that whatever they say it is, it ain’t that. This has never been truer than when discussing policing in America.

Now that Joe Biden is the official unofficial Democratic nominee, all the other candidates have dropped out and endorsed him, and former President Barack Obama’s endorsement is seen as his official unofficial coronation, the question is: now what? 

In the iconic movie Casablanca, Captain Renault (Claude Raines) is forced by the Nazis to close down Rick’s Café (really a casino, where he’s been gambling). Rick (Humphrey Bogart) asks why he’s being shut down. Renault’s ironic response, as the dealer hands him his winnings, is now a classi…

How did this happen? How did we come to be in this place? Why are we so unprepared to deal with this?

I want to you to ask yourself a question. Take your favorite African-American pundits on your preferred cable news outlet and ask yourself when you’ve ever heard them discuss or analyze how any policy proposals by a Democratic candidate for president specifically relate to the condition of t…

I cast my first presidential vote in 1972, and I’ve never not voted. I’ve never consider voting for a Republican as a matter of principle: we believe completely different things about the role and purpose of government in civil society. It doesn’t mean we can’t coexist, as long as I have eno…

I began my governmental career in March 1977 when then St. Louis Mayor John Poelker appointed me to the Community Development Agency Commission. I was 28 years old. My governmental service officially ended January 27, 2020 when Missouri Governor Mike Parson appointed Pamela Westbrooks-Hodge …

What happens in the world has as much impact on African Americans as everyone else, yet there has always been an African-American school of thought that says foreign affairs is white folks’ business and we put our agenda at risk when we engage on that issue. Nothing could be more wrong.

For the last several months the columns I’ve written have had something to with the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary, and I’d now like to bring some closure to at least this part of that process. I referred to this part of process like preseason NFL football: it has nothing to do with wh…

I don’t believe history literally repeats itself, but humans regularly find themselves in circumstances that are similar to circumstances of the past. And since humans are slow to evolve and learn, they find themselves regularly surprised when confronting similar circumstances and regularly …

“These are times that try men’s souls.”

In 1849 U.S. Senator John C. Calhoun gave a speech in the United States Senate where he said the following: “With us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black, and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are res…

In the previous column I said a political philosophy is analogous to a religious faith and the advantage that the rich, privileged and powerful have is they practice politics the way average people practice their religion, as a matter of faith. I want to make a correction. Faith and religion…

If you use mass popular media as your primary source of information to make decisions then you’re severely limited in understanding what a presidential election is all about is. Mainstream media treat presidential politics like a high school race for student council president – basically, a …

“Nobody knows anything. Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one.”

Who is the premiere national politician of the post-Reagan era? For me, there is only one candidate. I’m talking about the Mother of Dragons, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the leader of the House Democratic Caucus, the gentlewoman from California, U.S. Rep. Nancy Patricia…

If you’re black in America, you’re always faced with the same two political choices every four years: bad and worse. Approaching 2020, there’s no real discussion about the worse choice, Trump and his neo-fascist Republican Party. My advice to people of color and anti-racist white Americans f…

If you’re black in America, you’re always faced with the same two political choices every four years: bad and worse. Approaching 2020, there’s no real discussion about the worse choice, Trump and his neo-fascist Republican Party. My advice to people of color and anti-racist white Americans f…

If the United States was the country we pretend it to be, there would be no angst over the 2020 Presidential Election, because if the United States was that country, Donald Trump wouldn’t be president, because as the cliché goes, “we’re better than that.” The reality is Donald Trump is the p…

In “I Am Not Your Negro,” the Oscar-nominated documentary by filmmaker Raoul Peck about the work of the late James Baldwin, Baldwin makes the this observation: “What white people have to do is try and find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place, beca…