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Colin Kaepernick Shows That #BlackLivesMatter Even When His Career May Not
San Francisco 49ers backup quarterback Colin Kaepernick chose last Friday to remind America that black lives matter. It’s a laudable goal, and one for which he should be commended. The role of the black athlete in addressing pressing social issues has moved from the “risk it all” activism of the 1960s to the “Republicans buy…
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Donald Trump Doesn’t Understand White People
After a year and a half of dog-whistling so loud that even Blue Dog Democrats held their ears, Republican nominee Donald Trump has switched gears. First he was going to “Make America great”; then he was going to “Make America safe”; and now he’s pitching “What have you got to lose?” to African-American and Latino…
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No, Zendaya in Spider-Man: Homecoming Is Not the Progress We’re Looking For
Zendaya Coleman is everything that anybody black, brown or biracial could look for in an admirable tween pop star. She’s talented; her Disney Channel show, K.C. Undercover, is a campy mashup of The Proud Family and The Famous Jett Jackson; and most importantly, Zendaya is unmistakably, irrevocably and proudly black as hell—and don’t you dare…
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Finding Carly: Whatever Happened to the Breakout Stars, Heroes and Flops of the 2016 Primary Season?
The political campaign season has a funny way of giving everyone long-term memory loss. Your friends at work can remember the latest Hillary Clinton gaffe or Donald Trump stumble that happened 48 hours (or, in Trump’s case, five minutes) ago because it circulates on Twitter and Facebook. But when it comes to some event that…
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The GOP Hires Black ‘Suicide Squad’ to Save It From Trump
Suicide Squad was a pretty terrible movie that a whole lot of people saw. A group of criminals, thugs and psychopaths are brought together by shadowy government operative Amanda Waller (played by Viola Davis) to take on the jobs that no one else would ever take. Dirty jobs. Dangerous jobs. Jobs where your chance of…
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How Both Hillary Clinton and Black and Latino Journalists Blew Their Big Shot
There are a few people I would wait an entire day to see onstage. Chris Rock, if he were doing a live set with new material. Zadie Smith reading from one of her most recent works. I would even consider getting up early to get tickets to see Michelle Obama, since I haven’t heard her…
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Worst Behavior: How Donald Trump’s Self-Inflicted Wounds Let Hillary Clinton Off the Hook
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” That was the response of Larry Sabato, my mentor and old professor from the University of Virginia, when I asked him during a radio interview to put the last week of the 2016 presidential campaign in context. Sabato has been writing about American campaign politics since the 1970s; there…
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What Unity? Twitter Reveals a Great Divide Within Both Political Parties
Bernie Sanders dominates Snapchat, House Democrats just discovered Periscope and your grandma is starting to share her vacation on Facebook Live. Social media isn’t “mediating” life anymore; it is the primary mode of communication for Americans across class, race, gender and age. So when there is a Twitter analysis of the Republican and Democratic conventions,…
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Hillary Clinton Reminds America It’s Not About Qualifications
Qualified people get passed over for jobs all the time. Having the best résumé, doing the perfect interview and even providing the most stellar references (“Applicant saved me from a burning building once and makes a damn good cup of coffee; hire him!”) does not always guarantee that you’ll get the job. More often than…
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Dear Michelle Obama, Never Leave. Sincerely, Everyone
I am not unique when I say I have had a long and special relationship with first lady Michelle Obama. It started way back in 2008 when I got so many robocalls from her to get out and vote that I thought Barack might get jealous. In the last eight years, that nonexistent fantasy relationship…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
