While the majority of stars at the American Music Awards use their acceptance speeches to thank all the little people who got them there, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis used their moment to preach tolerance. Having won the award for favorite rap/hip hop album, Macklemore (whose real name is Ben Haggerty) quoted Martin Luther King Jr.…

In one of his first interviews since being released from prison for the death of Michael Jackson, Conrad Murray spoke with London’s Daily Mail and claimed that Jackson was a drug addict and that “Michael Jackson accidentally killed Michael Jackson,” Murray said. In a vividly detailed interview with the Mail, Murray, 60, who served as…

San Jose State University’s president announced that a fourth student has been suspended in connection with alleged hate crimes against a black student, and the NAACP wants all involved charged with felonies, the Associated Press reports. Civil right activists are demanding Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen file hate-crime charges against the four white…

Retha Powers used to dream in quotes. It wasn’t always this way, but after the publishing house Little, Brown and Co. approached the author about compiling and editing a reference volume that chronicles black life through quotations from early Egyptians right up to Cory Booker, the words became a part of her. “There was a…

Sometimes we collectively create the man, only to watch him become the thing he once rallied against. Hip-hop is funny that way. Artists use the story of their lives as the vehicle to drive a wedge between the man they have become and the person they once were. In street terms: Once the money gets…

A Massachusetts high school football team is forfeiting the remainder of its games after a player’s house was sprayed-painted with racist graffiti, the Huffington Post reports. Lunenburg High School has canceled its remaining two games after the house of Isaac Phillips, 13 (whose mother is white and father is black) was scrawled with the message:…

A man standing on a corner in Michigan waiting for his 6-year-old daughter to be dropped off from school wasn’t too worried about the van he saw circle him twice. “I saw the van circle twice, and the second time three kids came out. I didn’t suspect anything. I hadn’t any enemies, or any reason…

As if owning prime time television weren’t enough, Shonda Rhimes is looking to take over the literary genre. That’s right, the genius behind Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal has signed on with publishing powerhouse Simon & Schuster to write a memoir in 2015, Variety reports. “Simon and Schuster is crazy for giving me a book deal as I am clearly in…

“Three-fifths” and “Fraction” are the names three white roommates at San Jose State University gave their black freshman roommate to remind him that there was a time when blacks were considered a fraction of a person. They also outfitted the room with a Confederate flag and wrote the n-word on a dry erase board. Then…

When Sasha Obama went to the Comcast Center to watch her Uncle Craig’s Oregon State Beavers destroy the Maryland Terps last Sunday, I doubt she thought her black sweater with the unicorn on the front was making a fashion statement. Turns out, her sweater was the real winner that night—at least for ASOS. The online…