Commentary

The National Football League team that created and marketed the saying the “Patriot Way” has proven, once again, that they may not be the family organization they claim to be. The sudden firing of head coach Jerod Mayo is the latest example of how the team conducts its business.

As 2024 closed and we ring in the New Year, it is imperative to reflect on the significant strides made in one of Boston’s key economic drivers — the hospitality sector, particularly regarding representation and inclusion.

We want to think about our linkages in culture, our rituals and how we are always needing to remember our heritage. If we learn to value these narratives, they may bring us to who we are and who we are becoming.

You might not think of it but, the Blues, the most original contemporary Black music known the world over, is probably the most consequential original music artistry ever created and performed in all of history. Kind of crazy to say, but it’s true!

As our gem and gravity center, Black popular music culture used to be the place where we found answers and joy, a balm in our Gilead. A Stevie Wonder song, or a hip-hop anthem like “Headed for Self-Destruction” was a map. Aretha sang about “R.E.S.P.E.C.T.”

Bernice Johnson Reagon, a civil rights activist who co-founded The Freedom Singers and later started the African-American a capella vocal ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, passed on recently at the age of 81.

One question of interest in culture today is, how do we see ourselves? With all the speculation around pundits and polls and those seeking profits, it seems clear that we must ask ourselves what we can each do to commit to our own sense of worth by committing to uphold a just set of values.

I see culture as fluid and history as an expanding people map, moving through interaction and the creation of rituals and customs to mark a civilization’s expanding territories in time.

Cultural education, production and curation is critical at every level. And that extends to every level of cultural, social, spiritual, healthy, economic and political engagement of all communities at the serious strategy level.

In culture, the wars in fields, cities or in words matter. On the one hand, there is a need for culture to resonate, to project, to be in demand, like a hit or a new fashion statement or a local protest movement.

Dear Justice Thomas: I am writing you and not the other Supreme Court Justices who now form your “pack” [of conservatives] because they could never understand what it means to be Black in America, but I know you have before.

Black music culture, with all of our literature, scholarship, poetry, visual arts, paintings and dance, is a treasure of incrediblea value and human achievement at every level.