Published On: Wed, Dec 8th, 2021

Powerful critic of Black life and culture Greg Tate has died

Image courtesy of Jefferson Public Radio

Greg Tate, a powerful critic of Black life and culture, has died.

As reported by Jefferson Public Radio, Tate died at age 64. 

The news of Tate’s death was confirmed by a spokesperson at Duke University Press. No further details about his death were revealed. 

Tate was a staffroom writer for “The Village Voice” in 1987 where he documented all facets of Black culture.

He covered stories from the death of Michael Jackson to the changing nature of Black identity.

Tate later published his first book “Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America” in 1992. His book tackled topics of race, music, politics and literature. Tate was also a cultural critic, journalist and music writer.

After writing for “The Voice,” Tate went on to write for other media outlets. A few of these outlets include Rolling Stone Magazine, DownBeat, BBC and more. 

His last piece was for The Nation and was written in September. The piece survived the current Black cultural landscape of Frank B. Wilderson’s novel “Afropessimism.”

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time. But what he didn’t say was that, on a good day, it is mostly a sublimated state of rage since folk got bills to pay and sanity to keep,” says Tate in the piece.

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