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~ Omar Tyree is a New York Times bestselling author with an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Work of Fiction, who graduated from Howard University, cum laude, with a degree in Print Journalism from the School of Communications in 1991.

 

“The Humbling of the Sanders Family”

By Omar Tyree (May 9, 2025)

I remember Deion Sanders—the all-world football player from Fort Myers, Florida, who starred as a very popular defensive back at Florida State University—being drafted in the spring of 1989 to the Atlanta Falcons. He wore at least five to eight gold chains with gold medallions around his neck, big gold finger rings, designer sunshades, and custom-made clothes with a medium-height Jheri curl. And boy was he confidence and cocky at 21 years old. The interviewer, Andrea Kremer, even joked that he had spent his whole signing bonus on his jewelry.

That was more than 35 years ago. And Deion strutted into the National Football League (NFL), where he won two Super Bowl trophies with very popular teams in San Francisco and Dallas to become a Hall of Famer player and a Black American icon, because he was popular in more than just sports. Deion started recording music and was hanging out with all of the cool people in Atlanta, San Francisco, and then Dallas. Even his marriages and romantic life became a public spectacle.

Now we flash forward 35 years later, and Coach Prime, who has led his sons and other kids in youth football leagues in the Dallas, Fort Worth, Texas, area for a number of years before heading over to the HBCU (Historically Black College and University) of Jackson State University in Mississippi, where his two younger sons from a second marriage followed him. And Deion turned the Jackson State University football team into winners immediately with a mix of tough love coaching, innovation, experience, and a staff of a recognition.

Once again, Deion made the national news as everyone inside and outside of the football and sports world spoke highly of him setting such an inspiring example by coaching at a Black American college in need. But after a few years of winning, Deion jumped to the bigger program and money at the University of Colorado, where his two youngest sons and top recruit, Travis Hunter, followed him again and to break headlines in the college sports with the major division of PWIs, or what the Black college world calls Predominantly White Institutions, like the giant programs of Alabama, Georgia, Oregon, UCLA and USC—to name a few.

But this story is not just about Deion, his younger quarterback son, Shedeur, had risen on the college football analyst list as one of the top college passers in Division 1. That meant he was expected to be at least a Top 10 selection in the 2025 NFL Draft in Green Bay on the evening of Thursday, April 24^th at 8 PM Eastern Standard Time.

The conversations of where Shedeur may land were all over the place, including the Cleveland Browns at selection number two, the New York Giants at number three, the New Orleans Saints at number nine, or the Pittsburgh Steelers at number 21. I was hoping for Pittsburgh myself. After losing the young and athletic quarterback Justin Fields to the New York Jets this offseason, Pittsburgh needed a quarterback. However, none of those picks happened for Shedeur.

Instead, we all watched Deion, his quarterback son and the rest of the Sanders family, friends and invited guests at a private party event, where the young and confident quarterback, who was draped in far too much platinum jewelry, went undrafted after thirty-two selections in the first round. The New York Giants even traded back into the first round to draft the third-ranked quarterback, Jaxson Dart at pick number 25.

By that time, I was asking myself out loud, “What the hell is going?” There was no way in the world that 31 other players were more talented than Deion’s boy Shedeur. Then folks started talking about his team interviews at the NFL combine before the draft, and how confident / cocky he had been. Some folks talked about Deion’s comments on podcast and other interviews where he hinted of weening his son away from bad or undesirable football organizations, similar to what Archie Manning had done with his son Eli, who was selected by the San Diego Chargers in 2004 before being swapped to the New York Giants for Phillip Rivers.

The difference was, Archie Manning didn’t play his hand of cards until after his son, Eli, was actually drafted. Nor did Archie have the public persona of Deion Sanders, who could rub people the wrong way with his brash honesty and bravado, particularly the ownership class of old, white men. I realized that something was amidst once the broadcasters asked Mike Tomlin—the most respected and revered Black American coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers—about not drafting Shedeur at number 21, and Tomlin dodged the question.

That spoke volumes to me. When one of the most outspoken and secure Black coaches in the NFL refused to even address the question, you know that something is off. It got worse for the Sanders family after that. Not only did Shedeur get bypassed in the first round, but he was also bypassed in the second round when Cleveland, New Orleans and Pittsburgh all had a second chances to draft him, and they still didn’t do so. In fact, all three teams drafted quarterbacks who were rated lower than Sanders in the second, third and sixth rounds respectively.

After the first two days of the draft, with Sanders not being taken by a team, the entire NFL football world was shocked. But I was no longer confused about it. After watching and listening to the Sanders family parade around their private party with overconfidence, jewelry and braggadocio, I thought back to Cam Ward, who was the #1 draft pick at quarterback in this year’s 2025 NFL selection to the Tennessee Titans, and this cool and calm Black man in a casual suit and one lowkey chain with only his parents in attendance, walked out onto the stage in Green Bay with complete poise and respectable style. And the irony of the draft for Shedeur Sanders hit me immediately.

Deion, Shedeur and the rest of the Sanders family were doing far too much and had definitely pissed off the old, money-earning white men who own at least 28 of the 32 teams in the league, with a couple of women and men of color owning the last three or four teams. So, we all watched a good, old-fashioned humbling of the Sanders family on national television, and after a while, I couldn’t even argue or mad about it. You have learn to respect the powers of the profession that you’re in, and the Sanders family had definitely towed that line, as if they had their own NFL team that they could call the shots on, and they don’t.

So by the time Shedeur was finally taken by the Cleveland Browns in the fifth round of the draft at number 144, the humbled kid found himself excited as ever to join a team who had already drafted a new quarterback in Oregon’s Dillon Gabriel at number 94. Hell, the Browns didn’t even look happy to draft Sanders when the tv network flashed the cameras on their draft room. And not only that, the Cleveland team already has three veteran quarterbacks on their roster in Deshaun Watson, Joe Flacco and Kenny Pickett, who they had just picked up in a trade from Philadelphia.

That’s five competing quarterbacks on a clueless team that never seems to get the most important position in football right. Will Deion Sanders boy Shedeur be able to rise to the top of the competition to play at all this year Cleveland…? We shall soon see.

But one thing’s for sure, even though the high horse-riding quarterback from the Sanders family was viciously humbled by the white male brass of the NFL on draft weekend in Green Bay, the national fanbase still had obviously love for him, as the new Cleveland Browns hopeful ending up becoming the first fifth-round pick in NFL history to sell more jerseys than all of the other 200+ college football players who were drafted with him.

Imagine that for an ironic conclusion to this story. Regardless of how the old white men of American wealth and power feel about this brash, Black and talented Sanders family, the young white and Black man who watch the game look forward to seeing the cocky kid play. And now we’ll all get to see if he was overrated, underrated, or right on point in about five more months when the NFL football season is back in full blast.

Controversy Sparks Everything! By Omar Tyree (March 31, 2025)

The word controversy is defined as a discussion that is marked by the expression of opposing views that can create a public quarrel or strife in a given community or society. And we have had hundreds of major controversies in America where free speech and news reports continue to air any and all dirty laundry that American citizens may get involved in, whether Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, Native American or other.

Some of the giant historical American controversies come to mind as I first think back to the American presidents and the rumors about Thomas Jefferson, president number three, who allegedly fathered six children with his slave mistress, Sally Hemings, four of which survived to adulthood. Yet, millions of White American citizens in year 2025 still fail to understand the complications of the Black American race, which is by now 100% mixed blood, even with darker-skinned Blacks who often share Native American ancestry, who had melanin and darker skin of their own.

And how about the controversy of those same Native Americans being given blankets contaminated with smallpox to wipe out their population. Of course, White American historians dispute the claim that Europeans intentionally gave the natives blankets of smallpox, and that there is no solid evidence to support the claim. However, since it is well documented that the Native American population did not suffer from any smallpox outbreaks before the arrival of Europeans, whether White Americans want to admit the intent of the blankets or not, they cannot deny that they brought smallpox to America with them, and that hundreds of thousands of Native Americans died from the disease that they had not previously been exposed to.

But there is no denial about the Tuskegee, Alabama, syphilis experiments that White Americans conducted on Black men from 1932 – 1972. As the story goes, 399 Black men aged 25 and up were involved in the study, where 198 Black men who allegedly already had the disease, combined with another 201 Black men who were intentionally infected as part of a controlled study without their informed consent. And over 40 years—without these Black men being given penicillin that would have treated their illnesses—the disease was allowed to be passed on to their Black wives, women and children as these men went on about their family business. And these syphilis experiments on Black men will never be forgotten as Black America still doesn’t trust the White American medical community, even during the more recent Covid-19 vaccinations.

What about the controversy over the White Witches of Salem who were burned at the stake in the state of Massachusetts? But they weren’t burned at the stake. They were hung instead. Nineteen of them, including fourteen women and five men, with five more people who died in disease-ridden jails. One man who was even stoned to death for refusing to enter a plea. This was during early days of American history before the constitution was even formed back in 1692 and 1693, when more than 200 people were accused of witchcraft, another element of fear, accusation and destruction that White Americans brought over from the culture of Europe. The goal was to have all people conform to the European norms of belief and culture or else.

Then we had the controversy of Harriet Tubman, a courageous Black woman and abolitionist who had escaped slavery to arrive free in progressive city Philadelphia from Maryland in 1849, and utilized an Underground Railroad of safe houses from the 1830s – 1860s in order to help free a few dozen more slaves from the South, while becoming one of the most wanted vigilantes in American history, just because she wanted to help free her people. Black slaves were viewed as valuable property at the time. So, Tubman was called a thief in the night who needed to be dealt with. However, with over 13 dangerous missions to free slaves and deliver them even farther North to Canada, Tubman was never caught and ended up serving in the US Army as a scout during the Civil War.

Nat Turner was caught though. The Black man carpenter and preacher from the state of Virgina, who became so enraged by the ungodliness of slavery that he led a four-day rebellion in Southampton County in August of 1831, resulted in the deaths of 55 White Americans family members before being captured, tried and executed that same year in November. And not only did the incensed White Virginia military men hang Nat Turner. He was then beheaded and allegedly dissected with his tan skin being supplied for souvenirs and purses, while the rest of his flesh was used to make grease.

Rumor has it that Turner’s bones and other body parts were then divided as trophies to be handed down as family heirlooms. Even Nat Turner’s skull is rumored to have been held in a collection of a physician’s office in the city of Norfolk. How about that for a story of controversy?

Then we have Cassius Clay Jr., the celebrated Louisville, Kentucky-born and raised boxer who won an Olympic Gold Medal in 1960 and was later renamed, remembered, and honored as Muhammad Ali. Ali was never hung, chased or dissected like Nat Turner was, but he was surely hated by some of the same White Americans who called him a champion just months before he refused to be drafted into the Vietnam War in 1967. Stripped of his championship titles and not allowed to box again until his conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1971, Muhammad Ali would later become an American icon who was well-respected and celebrated around the world as arguably the most popular American athlete of all time. His classic interviews to explain himself and his strong beliefs as an American Black male athlete and a so-called “Black Muslim” continue to stand out in a country where present-day athletes and entertainers are often shunned, ostracized and intimidated from speaking out on anything outside of playing their sports or entertaining people.

Speaking of the idea of entertaining the American people, let’s look back at the controversies regarding the American presidents again, and how about the entire Kennedy family, from the father Joseph P. and his alleged bootleg empire with ties to the Italian mafia and foreign smugglers, to his presidential son John F. and his various affairs with exotic American women, including the famous rump with superstar actress, Marilyn Monroe. The Kennedy family seemed to famous for everything, but to this day in 2025, we still don’t know the real details behind President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 or his younger brother Robert’s conspiracy murder in 1968.

Nor do we know the full details of the murders of superstar rappers, Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls in 1996 and 1997, respectively. Both murders occurred during a very public East Coast / West Coast rap community beef with a dozen music-industry conspiracy theories and few hard facts to go on. An added controversy here is whether or not the American authorities really wanted to catch anyone involved in these rap murders. But with dozens of unsolved mafia murders in the Italian American community, we could say that American authorities don’t particular care much the Italian American community either, unless they catch someone on a tax evasion charge.

I could go on for a few more pages bringing up the various different controversies that have sparked years of opposing conversations in America, but the all-time biggest controversy for me would be the Bill Cosby case, where dozens of women came forth to accuse the celebrated entertainer and educator of drugging them with exotic drinks before having sex, starting back in the 1960s. Being from the city of Philadelphia myself, and actually graduating from the city’s Central High School, where Cosby once attended—with the many accolades Cosby had attained in his entertainment and academic career—I was particularly stunned and blindsided by the news of his past transgressions with women.

Like Oprah Winfrey and American Black women, Bill Cosby had risen to the highest respected and empowered position as an entertainment mogul for Black men, while producing both The Cosby Show and A Different World in the 1980s and 1990s, which created a blockbuster Thursday night line-up on NBC. Rumors later swirled that Cosby’s downfall was his public ambition in discussing a possible purchase of the whole NBC network with all of the television money that he had amassed.

The Black community’s logic was that “the powers that be” had suddenly allowed these old sexual allegations from more than 40 years ago to flood the public market until the stories could no longer be ignored or denied. Nevertheless, if these sexual allegations were true, or even half of them were true, then the “powers that be” had obviously brushed them under the rug while Cosby was making plenty of television executives good money. But once this overly ambitious Black man started speaking about buying the network, where powerful White men would suddenly work for him instead of the other way around, here comes the horrible stories from Cosby’s 1960s.

The fact that a younger Black male comedian out of the city of Chicago started the horror mill after bringing up several Cosby rumors in his comedy skits—including a fateful show he performed in Philadelphia that went viral—added more fuel to the controversy and conspiracy theories about Cosby and the powers who really run the American entertainment world.

After all that Cosby had done to uplift the imagery, careers and education of Black people in America, his sexual allegation news was incredibly troubling for a lot of us. Had the man been a rich asshole who never did anything for the community at large, it would have been easy to jump on the bandwagon of negativity and drive his career and legacy into the graveyard. But this man had given millions of dollars to Black universities, Black filmmakers, public school educational systems, health and mental disease research, and had opened up dozens of acting, writing, producing and directing opportunities for young Black talent in the entertainment industry, while inspiring all of us to think of Black people as the talented, professional, college-educated and family-oriented people that many of us are.

I even attended the acclaimed “Mecca” of all HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) at Howard University in “Chocolate City” Washington DC in the late 1980s and early 1990s, where we watched The Cosby Show and A Different Word religiously, while validating both shows as Black college students who had been studying and graduating from universities to become not only teachers and social workers, but doctors, lawyers, dentists, business owners and political and community leaders for over a hundred years, while non-educated people continued to debate whether we really existed. Imagine that.

And then the shocking news about Cosby came out and repeated itself again, and again, and again until it became shameful and embarrassing, particularly for Bill Cosby loyalists. But as the saying goes, “This too shall pass.” And with Cosby being in his late 70s and going through health issues, the younger nation of Americans were quick to blow him off and move on to the next big thing, as Americans will often do when your time in the positive spotlight is up. But while you’re in the spotlight, a major controversy can spark everything, whether positive or negative.

Controversy is the American way to becoming popular overnight, with “damage control” media experts who are tasked with figuring out the best ways to suffocate the kind of talk that can kill a person’s career like a frozen tundra, while fanning the kind of controversy that can spark an inferno on new public interest that rises up and makes a person more popular.

Either way, American controversy will ALWAYS spark something extra form the people, just think about Prince, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Britney Spears. What would their careers have been like without controversy…? Well, we will never know, because they always had it and knew how to use it. Prince even named his 1981 album and popular single after the word, because he understood what would help lead him to the top of the charts, and it was not just his music, but a controversial story behind it that would get the people talking who didn’t know or care about his music. That’s what controversy does, it creates urgent opinions and reactions to things that we become emotional about. So, it’s all about knowing which buttons to push… and then your controversy will spark something. 

Will The Honest Man & Woman Please Stand Up!

By Omar Tyree

Hip-Hop culture radio personality, podcaster, restaurant owner and book publisher, Charlamagne tha God, published a nonfiction project last year that was boldly titled Get Honest or Die Lying. But do you know how many people will die with lies that have never been converted into truth in this world? ALL OF US! Why? Because as Jack Nicholson’s character said on the stand in the famous Tom Cruise military movie—A Few Good Men—“You can’t handle the truth!” And we really can’t.

We’ve been trained to avoid the truth ever since our childhood years, because a good lie will always make the other person feel better. So, you learned to tell your mother that her food tastes good, but that you can’t eat it right now because you have a stomachache. You learned to tell your dad that his toupee looked normal, even though you were embarrassed every time he wore it. You learned to tell your older sister that her dress didn’t make her look fat, it was only her fear of other people’s perceptions. But you knew you couldn’t tell her to change it, because then she would know that you were lying. And you told your younger brother that your car had an alternator issue instead of telling him you would never trust him to drive your car without the fear of him wrecking it.

Of course, these are all called “little white lies” in America, harmless lies that serve to protect the other person from hurt feelings. Then we have what they call “big black lies” which are the ones that benefit the liar, like a white manager who lies to his black employees about the minimum wage pay for working at a local grocery store, while he pockets the difference. Or an older man telling a younger woman that he’ll pay her four-hundred-dollar car note after she cooks for him, cleans up his apartment, and gives him a little loving on the side. While afterwards, he tells her that something must have happened with his check that usually pops up in the mail on Fridays.

Lies happen every single day of our lives. It’s as common as running water. Sometimes we lie by not saying anything. You know, because you don’t want to rock the boat. So, instead of telling your husband that you don’t really like his family, you simple avoid being around them. Or when your wife says something you don’t particularly agree with, instead telling her the truth, which may cause an immediate argument that lasts longer than you’d like it to, you lead her to believe that you agree with a quick smile and a change of the subject.

And please don’t talk about criminals and American lawyers. They lie as a normal and natural part of their business. Who wants to go to jail for a crime they were arrested for if a lawyer can advise them on a great lie to maintain their freedom? You can always make a better decision next time, right? So, why go to jail for a bad decision?

Simply put, lies make life easier. That’s what people tell me every day now. Just lie, Omar! That’s how you get out of this. Don’t tell them the truth. No one wants to hear it. You’re only going to make people upset with you. And you don’t want to piss off your audience. Then no one will want to listen to you. No one will want to buy your products. No one will want to speak to you or follow you. No one will invite you to anything. And no one will have anything good to say about you. So, you learn to lie, lie, and lie some more to be consistent with your other lies.

That’s the world we live in now. You have to spin your lies into love. Spin your lies into smiles. Spin your lies into kindness and warmth. Spin your lies into the opportunistic feelings and energy of hope. Spin your lies into a bank account full of money. Ultimately, you want your lies to become fully acceptable to the people in order to make them feel good, while collecting sponsorships and endorsement deals for your uplifting their spirits.

What’s so wrong with that? Everyone likes to feel good. Don’t you? Wouldn’t you rather I told you you’re going to be rich and famous after five more years of dreaming than telling you to get your act together before you end up broke and searching for a new career? Who wants to hear that? That’s just obvious. Give me a sweet lie over a bitter truth any day of the week. Right? That good lie will keep me smiling, energized and happy.

But then the truth sneaks out. At some point. And we’ll be forced to deal with it. The only problem is, we don’t know how to. Because nice people have been lying to us for our entire lives. Our moms, dads, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, grandparents, business partners—you name it. So, we become unprepared for the truth and attempt to run from it. We try to reject it. We push it away and get upset. “That’s just not true!”

We try our best to ignore it and slide it under the rug to the point of becoming delusional. Then we find a whole group of other people who agree with the lies, while we find ways to normalize them.

That’s the world that we’ve created. So, when these kids fail, they have no idea why. Sure, we told them twenty times what they need to do, and how they need to think, and the hard work they need to put in. We warned them that it won’t be easy, and that it may take them a little longer than what they think.

But they didn’t want to hear any of that, the hard work, tough skin and determination they’ll need to battle through the real struggles of TRUTH that life presents to us. No. They wanted the easy routed lies that go down real smoothly in your stomach. But then they get stuck there in your belly with nowhere to go, because you’ve never learned the hard facts of life that allow you to form that iron in the fire that successful people use as a tool for all of the hurdles, roadblocks, landmines, sabotages and guerrilla attacks that all serve to derail our goals.

But the people who really win, they ask for the TRUTH. Because only the truth will prepare them for the hard work of the victory. And the victory is never easy, even when you’re prepared for fit. That’s what the truth teaches you. It’s hard out here. But with awareness, tenacity, preparation and determination, you can still win.

So, may the honest man and woman please stand up and stop allowing these kids to make up their new perspectives and formulas to old realities and obsoletes that will predictably lead them to failure. Then they’ll look back at us truth-sayers after another five years of lies and delusions, and admit, “Damn! You told me the truth five years ago.”

Nevertheless, every man and woman gotta learn for themselves.

~ Omar Tyree is a New York Times bestselling author with an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Work of Fiction, who graduated from Howard University, cum laude, with a degree in Print Journalism from the School of Communications in 1991.

“In Love with a Boss Lady” (February 4, 2025)

By Omar Tyree

Ambitions, expectations, and discontent mixed with a loss of trust and faith has killed the relationship tolerance of many African American women, enough to place their stress-worked Black men on ice. Seemingly forever. Because she can do bad or good by herself now. So… where does that leave us Black men and the kids?

It’s a new day now, where everyone wants what they want and will separate in a heartbeat if they can’t have it. As the saying goes, “Too many Indians wanna be the chief.” Or something like that. The perspective always changes depending on the speaker. But now every speaker wants to speak. Every driver wants to drive. Every creator wants to create. And every leader wants to lead.

That’s exactly where the problem lies. Everyone can’t do everything at the same time. Four different people can’t drive the same car unless they take turns. But who will drive first, and who will be expected to drive the longest? Who will pay for the gas? And who will fix the flat tires? That’s how complicated the simplest decisions can become in a challenged relationship.

So, if my lady wants to be a boss, and she already shows the characteristics of it, then what’s my role to be?

Can we both be bosses? Does that work? Or will I be forced to tone down my manhood to become more agreeable and negotiable for my boss woman? Does that work? Are all men built with the same level of sociability, or are some men gifted with the right temperament to “get along” where other are not?

Furthermore, will every woman respect a man who is willing to submit to her ideas of equality, particularly if she has never really seen a man do it? Maybe that equilibrium of power in the relationship is a goal of hers, to see if she can actually mold a man into the character who fits her dreams. You know, the vision of the perfect man that she’s always wanted. Or close enough.

But what’s a man to say about that? Does he want to be molded? Would he resist? What would his resistance look like? Random meanness? Physical intimidation? Degradement? Infidelity? Anything to prove that he’s still a man. Whatever that means to him. Because men weren’t all built in the same fire. They have different temperaments, thresholds of pain, and dos and don’ts that were learned in their upbringings.

For instance, young men who were raised by fathers tend to emulate many characteristics of their old man. So, if the old man would only trust and submit to a submissive woman who respected him unconditionally in the 1970s, 60s and 50s, then how is junior planning to deal with a boss lady who can’t even say the word submit in year 2025?

Will that attitude work? Or will adaptations be necessary for both the man and the woman to survive this new era? And I repeat, these adaptations are needed for both the man and the woman. Because a goal-oriented woman who is denied her dreams—for whatever reason—can serve to wreck an entire household with her discontent.

There’s another saying that goes, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” where a first-generation boss lady could unwittingly ruin herself and everyone around her by pushing and shoving into a space of heightened failures and frustrations. Well, failure and frustrations are the realities of life that men deal with every day. You’re not always gong to be successful at what you want to do in life. So, you deal with it and keep it moving as guys like to say.

But as these young boss ladies become more obsessed with winning the gender / power battle against the world, her Black man has now become more of an adversary than a partner. That’s when she no longer feels like submitting to him, while fighting the whole institution and establishment of dominant manhood.

She is now sick of it! Tired of it! Done with it! And can’t stand bowing down to these simple-minded men. So… in that situation, what is her man supposed to do? Does he think he’s going to change the institution of men for his wife or girlfriend, and everyone is going to line right up for her rule? Hell, he’s still a man himself who wants a woman and not a She-Hulk. (If you don’t know the comic book character look it up.) So, now he’s conflicted with how to deal with her.

And what we end up with is a challenged union where both the man and woman need to communicate what they are doing, and how they both feel about it. Every relationship needs to do that, but a relationship with a boss lady needs it even more. Why? Because that role of the woman has not served well for dominant men, unless he has a secured comfort in exactly what they are they doing. And that communication needs to be respectful, where the woman shows that appreciates that man for allowing her an opportunity to be the woman she wants to be without her belittling him with her elevated money, power and status.

Does he often feel like he’s her servant when he opens a door for her? Does he feel like a five-year-old child when she gets upsets and unleashes on him verbally? Does he feel like he’s constantly waiting for her standalone decisions that he has little or no impact on? What woman believes this behavior is desirable to a man?

Then, as your boss lady uses up her energy and focus to fight the gender battle power in corporate America or wherever, she may come home worn out, four out of five days a week, and may not feel up to allowing her man to express himself intimately. You know, she’s tired.

“Don’t you see me going to work every day to make these big bucks? What’s wrong with you, man? Open your eyes! You ain’t getting none tonight. I got a a big project due tomorrow that I’ve been working on all week. You know that.”

No disrespect to a hard-working boss lady, but not allowing your man to express himself until you want to, will become another problem for a man who has a high libido, which dominant men tend to have. Hell, a less dominant man may rub her feet, cook her dinner, and wait for her to let him know when she’s ready. And if she finds that man and likes him, she better hold on tight and love him hard.

However, far too many young women have not learned or been taught how to respect that man, who is willing to submit to her, because she’s never seen it, and her mother never had it. So, she doesn’t know what it’s supposed to flow like, she just knows that she wants it, and will break up with him if she doesn’t get it. Breaking up has become the norm now from young women who are tired of everything. Yet… they still seek out men to date and be with because they are women who are biologically driven to procreate just like men are.

And yes, just like we have dominant men, who born and raised that way, we have dominant women who were born and raised to take charge as well. I know that fact very personally because I had a dominant mother. Born and raised in West Philadelphia as the oldest of eight children with four younger brothers, my mother Renee didn’t have a choice. She was born into a boss position in the family as the oldest of the brood, and she hung around her two male cousins, Billy and Sammie, who were oldest children in their house. And both of these cousins were rough, dominant men, who hung out with another West Philadelphia man named Robert “Bobby” Tyree, who was the oldest in his house.

Attracted to his handsome masculinity, my moms got pregnant by my pops, who had dropped out of Overbrook High and ended up with a heroin problem after his younger brother Gary died in a military experiment. So, moms never married my pops. Instead, after graduating third in her class from West Philadelphia High School, dropped the baby boy off with grandmom, grandpop, and the sisters, brothers and cousins at the big house, and she attended Temple University, graduating from the School of Pharmacy in 1974, with her proud family and her hardheaded, 5-year-old boy right there to celebrate with her as the first college grad in the family. My mother.

But here’s the significance facts of Renee’s story and mine. My mother was born in 1950, which made her a teenager in the 1960s, where most girls knew better than to challenge the wildness of men, especially in a tough territorial city like Philadelphia in the 1960s. Not only that, my mother was used to being around hardcore men and preferred them, while not attracted to anyone who couldn’t pass the tough guy test with her younger brothers or cousins. And my pops,  Robert Tyree, passed that test with flying colors and left my mother with a hard rock son to raise.

With the warrior blood and genetic temperament of “Bobby”—as everyone called him—I was not an easy boy to deal with. So, when my mother brought her own house at age 26 as a single Black mom in the 1970s, instead of her saying, “I can do bad or good by myself,” my mother still wanted to be married to a man and raise a family. She still wanted and needed a strong man for herself and a father figure for her very masculine son. So, she went out and found that man.

Melvin Alston Sr. was another dominant West Philly man who had graduated from the same Overbrook High School that my father Robert had dropped out of. Melvin was also 6’4’ and two-hundred and thirty pounds to my father’s 6’1” and two hundred. And neither one of these brothers would back down from a challenge. However, my mother made more money than both of them.

Nevertheless, Melvin told my mother from Day 1, “I’m not living in a woman’s house.” So, he bought his own house in the fabulous Northwest Philadelphia neighborhoods of Mt. Airy, where Black folks had moved on up like The Jefferson show for better living and peace of mind in the 1960s and 70s, during a period called “integration” followed by “white flight” to the suburbs. And we rented out my mother’s house to collect more income.

I moved to Mt. Airy with my moms and step pops in 1978 and was placed in Catholic School in the fourth grade to strategically calm down my rugged West Philadelphia attitude with the help of a serious-minded man who could intimidate physically, mentally, and verbally when he needed to help raise me right. And I am continuously thankful for it.

Now we’re in a new era where a boss lady like my mother may not have the same respect, upbringing or logic to understand what is needed more than her personal feelings or desires in order to create a situation of stability for herself and her children. My mother then had two more boys with my stepfather, who all became attracted to dominant women, because we were used to it. Yet, our mother never dominated our father, who has NOT HAVING IT! Therefore, all three of her sons did what they were supposed to do. All three of them graduated from high school and college with no criminal records or jail time.

But here we are in a new era now where young Black women want what they want over EVERYTHING, to the point of breaking up their young families. So, as I now look at my two grown sons, who are both childless, I’m scared to death at what situation they may land in with the wrong young woman who doesn’t know HOW to allow a young man to be a man, while these women try their best to be bosses.

I don’t have all of the answers, and I am not a relationship guru. I’m just a brother who understands how to explain complicated things with words that make sense. And what I see right now is humans moving closer and closer to the animal kingdom, where men and women procreate and move on to allow the mother to raise the offspring with her own power, her own decisions, and her own logic, because she don’t want to be controlled by no man, and he doesn’t want to be controlled by no woman.

So, God help the next generation. Even when men have money now, you have young boss women lining up, not to be his wife or his mate forever, but just long enough to have a child or two, where she can be a boss with his money and not his presence because she don’t want to be under no man. Just listen to how young Black women talk about relationships today, and it will blow your mind.

I’ll finish this long and important blog article with a new saying, “God Bless the child who can find a mate who understands all of their wants and needs and are able to successfully negotiate them all to create a civil and satisfying union that can last a lifetime.”

Amen!

~ Omar Tyree is a New York Times bestselling author with an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Work of Fiction, who graduated from Howard University, cum laude, with a degree in Print Journalism from the School of Communications in 1991. 

Trump Nation (January 22, 2025)

By Omar Tyree

I responded to a post on Instagram this past weekend before President Elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration on Monday, January 20th. Apparently, there were a lot of comments being made about Snoop Dogg and other Black music artists from our community being used to increase the Republican president’s ratings with event performances, particularly since Trump had such a miserable showing of performers during his first inauguration in January of 2017.

Some folks even went as far as to call the artists sell-outs while others brought up comments of opposition Snoop had made against Donald Trump in the past. I found it all to be interesting because it proved that Trump was thinking about us. So, I went ahead and said so in an Instagram response and left my name @Only1OmarTyree.

An hour later, someone responded to my comments with sarcasm by asking, “Donald Trump is THINKING about us? Really?”

So, I kept the banter going and said, “Of course he’s thinking about us if he’s going out of his way to have us to perform for him.” There was no mandate for the President-elect to have Black performers at his inauguration. He could have had four pop, two rock and three country artists all performing without a blink. But he didn’t do that because he had an agenda that included Black people for whatever reason. So, I went ahead and made an additional comment on Instagram that we all need to stay close to President Donald Trump to get whatever we need out of these next four years of his presidency, particularly since we KNOW that he’s thinking about us.

Well, that got me in even more trouble with the social media crowd. The next thing I knew, I was being called “delusional” for suggesting that Donald Trump having Black performers at his inauguration meant that he cared about Black people.

So, I had to go back in for a third time and clear things up, because I didn’t say that Donald Trump cared about us. I said he was thinking about us, and there is a huge difference. The point is, just because a lot of us didn’t vote for the man doesn’t mean that we can deliberately ignore him now, because he’s still the PRESIDENT of the United States of America. That means we have work to do to make sure he doesn’t turn back every law in the books that benefits Blacks, immigrants, powerless poor people or his political enemies.  

So, I’ll say it again, since we KNOW that Donald Trump is thinking about us, we have to stay on this dude and remain close to him. That doesn’t mean we have to do so individually, but somebody has to do it. That’s the nature of politics. We may all not get along, but we still need to find ways to agree on the things that we’ll need to fight for to remain a part of our American Civil Liberties. And us walking around being mad at Trump for winning his second election instead of figuring out how we need stay on top of him would be useless and immature.

I mean, I didn’t vote for the man either, nor did I vote for my school principal in the third grade, or the superintendent by the time I made it into high school. But like it or not, we still had to deal with their authority, until we or they moved on. And Donald Trump only has four years. In fact, he has less than four because the clock is already running and it’s almost February.

It would be very foolish for us to walk around yelling, “F the president” everyday while he’s still in office changing every law that he can get his hands on. We need to have Black, White, Brown, Red, Yellow or whoever else we can entrust to stay around him every single day for the next four years to watch his every move and report them all back to us. And these informants can be singers, dancers, rappers, comedians, athletes or whatever, as long as we have somebody close to him who knows what times it is.

These passionate and opinionated social media people can argue with me all they want. At the end of the day, I’ve been voting ever since the late 1980s, not so much for me, but for the people. Because I always looked at politics like this: “No matter who the president is, I’m gonna make my money and do what I gotta do no regardless. Politics don’t and won’t control my life. But… for the people who need laws and policies to help them in any way, I’m voting for them.”

That way, I pull my personal feelings and emotions out the mix and vote for the common good of the people. I do the same thing when a new man—or woman—is in office. I ask myself, “What do we need to pay attention to? And what do we need to fight for?”

Us getting extra emotional about the loss of the election doesn’t change anything unless our emotions push us toward positive action. But if our emotions cause us to have a tantrum while standing on street corners smoking Bob Marleys with our middle fingers up to the president when we know we didn’t vote for anyone, that would be ridiculous and counterproductive.

No. What we need to do is keep our eyes WIDE OPEN and slide as many of our people close to Donald Trump as possible for the next four years. And instead of calling Snoop Dogg and Nelly sell-outs and Uncle Toms, we need to be saying, “Good job, Snoop, Nelly. Get in there and figure out what he’s doing. Go spook and sit by the door.”

Yes. During these next four years of Trump Nation, someone has to sit by the by door at ALL TIMES. It’s a hell of a job that needs a lot of discipline, maturity, and plenty of focus. Now how many of us are courageous enough to take that position?

Omar made a guest appearance on the Thought Brothers podcast to debate this topic.  Watch and decide for yourself where you stand on this hot-button issue.

~ Omar Tyree is a New York Times bestselling author with an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Work of Fiction, who graduated from Howard University, cum laude, with a degree in Print Journalism from the School of Communications in 1991. 

“Why I Write Fiction” by Omar Tyree

Posted January 9, 2025

When I first sold books from small vendor tables during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season of 1992, I was 23 years old with one self-published book out, Colored, On a White Campus, The Education of a Racial World. And the older brothers would stop by my table and ask the same question every single time. “Is this book fiction or nonfiction?”

As the saying goes, you “write what you know.” So, I had written about a lot of my own experiences as a radical freshman and sophomore student at the University of Pittsburgh, where I attended school from the Summer of 1987 until the Spring of 1989, with dreams of walking onto the Pitt Panthers football team after running track.

That would make my first book a work of “nonfiction” or based strictly on the facts. But when I changed the name of the college, the characters, some of the scenes, and added some things that didn’t happen, the book moved to what publishers’ call “fiction,” or a created work based on the imagination.

That’s what brothers get stuck on. They read the words “fiction” and “nonfiction” and translate it to “imagination” versus “facts” but it’s not that simple. The reality is, both fiction and nonfiction are based on the FACTS of life to have believability. And whatever you add or change in the story still must make SENSE to the reader, where each reader will stop and ask themselves, Could this really happen? It becomes your job as the writer to show them HOW.

In other words, if you don’t understand the things that happen in real life, then you can’t create anything about real life either because it won’t make SENSE to the readers. Even the most creative genres of science fiction and fantasy are based on the FACTS of what we know about science and unusual phenomenon.

Take the law of gravity for example. If we all know that gravity will not allow us to fly on planet earth without airplanes or helicopters, then Superman must have some extra powers that allows him to fly anyway. And he does, because he’s from another planet where the inhabitants are far more powerful than us humans here on earth. Once that reality has been explained and established within the book, we can then read a Superman comic and BELIEVE IN IT!

But if Superman was not explained through the laws of science and physics, and readers could not understand HOW he was able to fly, then he would have never become the American comic hero that he’s been now since 1938.

As a born and raised West Philadelphian who moved up to a nicer neighborhood of Mt. Airy at age nine, I had always been a storyteller, I just wasn’t writing them yet. My stories would be verbal like most of us. And just like comedians, I would mimic people’s voices and body movements in the flow.

My stories were about the typical neighborhood fights, house parties, flyy girls, cool guys, football games, basketball courts, playgrounds, music, movies, picnics, family reunions, trips downtown, trips to the amusement parks, trips to the mall, traveling to other cities, national news events. You know, the regular stuff that people like to talk about and listen to.

However, regurgitating what happened at an event, asking people questions about it, and doing more research on a known topic is all secondary writing and not primary.

What do I mean by that? Well, all you’re really doing in nonfiction is “reporting” on what’s already there. You can explain it all with fresh eyes, wisdom, and logic, but it’s not as if you’re bringing anything new to the table. You’re just explaining or commenting on the known.

It’s like writing about the features on a Rolls Royce Phantom, one of the most exotic luxury cars ever produced. You have people who write about them and others who actually DESIGN them. Both positions have their place of importance, but there is no “reporting” on a “nonfiction” luxury car until someone CREATES it first. And that creative DESIGNER becomes the PRIMARY WRITER, while everyone else becomes SECONDARY reporters.

That’s why the concept of “fiction” is so important. Are you guys able to take the FACTS of life and utilize them to create something NEW that speaks to the realities that we all agree to? Can you do that for 300, 400 and 500 pages? Can you just “make it up?” Let me see you do that without the facts.

The word “fiction” can also be viewed as “original,” like Black people have done with the musical art forms of jazz, soul, funk, disco, rock and roll, and hip hop. We have ALWAYS been the original creators of music, while other cultures have reported on it and copied US! You get it?

We created the “nonfiction” MUSIC for everyone else to report on, research, copy and keep alive for the next generations. But while we were creating it, it was still considered “fiction”, or music that wouldn’t last. We’ve done the same thing in professional sports, rewriting the record books in football, basketball, baseball, boxing, and track and field. We’re even taking over the world of gymnastics. Did y’all catch the last Summer Olympic Games in France, where young Black Olympians were creating new flips and competition moves that have never been done before? But it was all “fiction” before they did it.

Well, in the book world, us brothers like to sit back and allow Stephen King, John Grisham, James Patterson, Michael Chritton and a dozen other white male fiction authors to LEAD US with their creations and originality, while we become the CUSTOMERS of their fictional books, films and culture, including the Marvel Comics / Walt Disney produced Black Panther that became a BILLION DOLLAR BABY for who…?

Think about that the next time you speak to discredit or disregard a so-called “fiction” writer. That brother or sister is not “MAKING IT UP,” they are simply improvising along the lines of what makes SENSE, just like Miles Davis, Charlie “Bird” Parker, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk and dozens of other brothers did with jazz music. It’s the same concept with young brother who “freestyle” in hip hop, which is considered more challenging than memorizing rhymes that have already been written.

These brothers are not REPORTING or copying other people’s music, they are CREATING their OWN, like Richard Wright did with Native Son, Ralph Ellison did with Invisible Man, Chester Himes did with Cotton Comes to Harlem, Walter Mosely did with Devil in a Blue Dress and Omar Tyree did with Just Say No! based on the FACTS of real life.

However, if we REFUSE to READ any of these stories because of their tag of “fiction,” or we don’t have the TIME or RESPECT for the skills that are involved, then we run the risk of more feminine-based creations that speak to the dominant book buyers, WOMEN. That’s how you can write 30+ books with more than 20 of them focused on male lead characters, yet the readers only seem to know you for eight feminine books, including a Flyy Girl series.

So, as I now reach the ripe age of 56 in April, I have PLENTY of hot topics I would like to address for the brothers who still find ways NOT to read anything, whether they are listening to audio-books or video instructions on YouTube. I will now answer any and all questions on this “nonfiction” Blog / Podcast entitled “The Blackman’s Perspective” as a seasoned, salt and pepper Black man who has thought about EVERYTHING!  Then we will publish it all in a book.

But before I let you go on this fiction / nonfiction conversation. Did y’all know that Alex Hailey’s Roots was classified as fiction? Look it up for yourself. Haley’s explanation is that his book uses meticulous historical research on his African origins, but then he had to recreate the story with dialogue and actions, which forced the publishing world to call it “fiction,” while Haley called it “faction” or based on the FACTS.

But let’s be honest here. Do y’all really believe that people who write so-called “nonfiction” books are going to remember everything that was said 10, 20 and 30 years ago?

PLEASE! We are ALL recreating what we THINK we still remember as we piece it all together in our minds, and some of us have better memories than others.

Well, that happens to be ME. I was that young guy in the neighborhood with the memory, the creativity, and the understanding to get the story RIGHT, while adding relevant meaning to it. And I’m still doing that now. But I need us BROTHERS to help me out this time. Our creative book space has become far too feminized without your support.

So, go ahead and ask me any Black male question that you have an issue with, and let’s see if my answers make any SENSE. And this ain’t fiction. It’s the FACTS!

Here’s a partial video slideshow of Omar Tyree’s work.  Enjoy this visual journey through his groundbreaking books and his enduring impact on the world of literature.”

Omar Tyree is a New York Times bestselling author, NAACP Image Award winner, and professional journalist. A proud graduate of Howard University, Tyree has mastered a range of writing styles, including fiction, nonfiction, hard news, op-eds, screenplays, and stage plays.

Known as the “Godfather of Urban Fiction,” Tyree brings his expertise to discussions about The State of Black Writing, his prolific career, and his vision for the future of literature.

Tyree’s literary journey began at Howard University, where he transferred after completing his first two years at the University of Pittsburgh. He burst onto the literary scene in October 1992, captivating readers with his groundbreaking urban fiction. His classics, such as Flyy Girl, A Do Right Man, Single Mom, Sweet St. Louis, For the Love of Money, Just Say No!, Leslie, Diary of a Groupie, What They Want, The Last Street Novel, Pecking Order, and works from his Urban Griot series (Capital City, College Boy, One Crazy Night, Cold Blooded), have inspired millions of readers and a new generation of writers.

In addition to his urban fiction, Tyree has written extensively in other genres, including nonfiction, poetry, children’s and young adult literature, business, international thrillers, short stories, and autobiographies. Notably, he co-authored Mayor for Life: The Incredible Story of Marion Barry Jr., chronicling the life of Washington, D.C.’s iconic late mayor.

Today, Tyree continues to create impactful literary works and is focused on adapting his stories for film, music, and educational events on a global scale.

To learn more about Omar Tyree click here to visit his Hot Lava Entertainment website.

Publisher’s Note:  This first column is SPONSORED BY SIMON & SCHUSTER.

Omar Tyree photo credit – Stephen Hudgins