Nike releases a print ad affirming the beauty of a big butt. Pump your brakes, because it’s not all benevolent. The company is also trying to sell a new butt-enhancing shoe. Through poetry, the athletic giant celebrates the beauty of a round butt, even though the model in the ad is scantily clad and racially…

Supermodel Naomi Campbell is in the news for something other than her bad temper and world-class phone-throwing skills. On Tuesday, war-crimes judges ordered special security measures for Campbell when she testifies at the trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor. Photographers have been barred from photographing the supermodel entering or exiting the courtroom. Really. You…

Fresh from the “Are you still talking?” file, LeBron James placed a front page ad in the Akron Beacon Journal, his hometown paper, just days before making his first public appearance there since his ESPN announcement gone wrong. He wrote, “Akron is my home, and the central focus of my life.” He continued, “It’s where I…

Omar Thornton, a warehouse driver who was caught on videotape stealing beer from the distributorship where he worked, went on a shooting rampage, killing eight people before committing suicide, authorities said. Thornton complained to his girlfriend that he found a noose and a racial epithet written on the wall at Hartford Distributors, but his supervisors had…

People are up in arms about SB 1070 in Arizona, but racial profiling is something that is as American as apple pie. What we call a “civil rights issue,” many communities of color call an everyday experience. Colorlines profiles voices from Brooklyn, N.Y., where racial profiling is a part of the cultural experience. These young…

Fresh from the “Are you kidding us?” file, an ESPN announcer asked Kenyatta Houston, a black crew member for race-car driver Kevin Harvick, to tap-dance “for us.” Houston is a graduate of NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity Program. How ironic? The funny thing about this sad situation is that the brother actually did it. Clearly he…

Six teenagers drowned in the Red River in northwest Louisiana. Apparently one of the teens stepped off of a ledge and into an 18-foot sinkhole. The others went in to try to rescue the teen, but none of them could swim. Shreveport Fire Chief Brian Crawford told the Shreveport Times that the victims, ages 13 to…

Authorities searched the home of murdered ex-NBA star Lorenzen Wright’s ex-wife. Neighbors reported that they saw heavy smoke coming from the fire pit in Sherra Wright’s backyard on the day Wright disappeared. They thought it was odd that she would be using the fire pit because it was extremely hot that day. Homicide detectives spent…

The fallout from the WikiLeaks documents read around the world continues. In case you’ve been living under a rock, federal authorities have arrested Pfc. Terri Manning, a 22-year-old intelligence analyst based near Baghdad, Iraq, who had top-secret security clearance to sensitive information about the war. The U.S. military is holding Manning in a Kuwait jail because…