Africa's Albino Models: Fighting Stigma With Beauty

By: Jenée Desmond-Harris | Posted: January 16, 2013 at 9:12 PM

The Huffington Post via i-mag

Kris Kross plans a reunion: The duo will be onstage together for only one night, though. Miss out on the So So Def Anniversary Stars concert and risk missing jumping up and down with the backward-clothes-wearing duo for another decade or more.

Albino models making their mark in Africa: In the U.S. we have the scourge of colorism. Elsewhere there's that, plus outright hate against people whose skin is unusually pale. But Thando Hopa is using fashion and beauty to change the stigma faced by people with albinism -- a condition affecting melanin production that results in little or no pigmentation -- in many parts of Africa. "I now realize that I have a platform to inspire young girls, and as someone who never had a role model who looked like me when I was growing up, I now hope to be able to show that albinism can be beautiful and is just another kind of normal," she says.

Dick Gregory: "Spike Lee is a thug and a punk": Is it possible that there's been more real-life drama surrounding Django Unchained than there is on the screen? The civil rights activist's comments about one of the controversial slavery-themed flick's biggest critics are the latest.

Three reasons it's never too late to follow your career dreams: Inspired by the Welcome to Sweetie Pie's matriarch, Black Enterprise wants to convince you that you'll never age out of the quest for success.

Is Scandal too scandalous? The Parent Television Council thinks so. Scenes from this week's episode were apparently too graphic and violent for the group's taste.

Like The Root on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.