Politics: John Ridley has distinguished himself for decades as a writer, producer and commentator. While the film Undercover Brother was wildly uneven, it also contained some clever and biting sections that celebrated African-American culture even as it was lampooning it. He's done very procative and sharp radio essays for National Public Radio, hosted an engrossing, often heated film and arts discussion program on A&E and written some excellent books that merged the pulp fiction, detective and science fiction genres.
           But all Ridley's past accomplishments haven't insulated him for heavy criticism for a controversial essay he penned in the December 2007 issue of Esquire. Ridley titled it "The Manifesto of Ascendancy for the Modern American" Esquire didn't blot out the other letters in the slur) where he sharply criticized what he saw as an overemphasis among Blacks
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