Over Thanksgiving break, three basketball players from Edison Tech High School in Rochester, N.Y., were arrested for disorderly conduct. But the teens and their basketball coach are saying they did nothing wrong. According to WROC-TV, the teenagers were waiting downtown with about 16 other teammates for a school bus to take them to a scrimmage…

Some residents of south Baton Rouge, La.—a predominantly affluent and white area of the city—want to secede from the city and create a new one named “St. George,” the Raw Story reports.  A study by the Baton Rouge Area Chamber has already concluded that incorporating a new city would most likely end in Baton Rouge…

Fashion has been used many a time before as an excuse to wear racist costumes, like blackface, beyond Halloween. It looks as if the fashion industry—well, some of those associated with it, anyway—is at it again. Elle France Beauty Editor Jeanne Deroo posted a picture on Instagram in which she is in full-on blackface, complete…

A new report commissioned by Barneys distances the store from the New York Police Department frisks that have both the business and the police force reeling from accusations of racial discrimination, the Associated Press reports. According to the review, the store did not have a “written or unwritten” policy to profile its customers of color…

And once again someone has botched Kerry Washington’s appearance on a magazine cover by lightening her skin a wee bit too much (or a lot). In the December/January issue of Lucky magazine we see an overedited, nearly unrecognizable Washington, with lighter, frosty-looking skin and narrower, thinner features.  Twitter didn’t take long to jump on the…

In 1944 a 95-pound 14-year-old boy was strapped to an electric chair in South Carolina for murdering two little girls, ages 7 and 11. He is the youngest person ever to be executed in the United States in the last 100 years, The Telegraph reports. George Stinney, an African American, was accused of killing two…

When you offend the most notorious hate group in the United States of America with your Halloween costume, you might have gone a smidge too far. As it turns out, the Ku Klux Klan isn’t at all impressed, honored or pleased by a 7-year-old Virginia boy’s Halloween costume, which imitated the long, white robes of…

Lonnie Johnson, founder of the Atlanta-based company Johnson Research and Development Co., has been awarded almost $73 million in royalties from Hasbro, Inc., the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, settling a long royalties dispute with toy-making giant. “In the arbitration we got everything we asked for,” attorney Leigh Baier told the Journal-Constitution. “The arbitrator ruled totally in…

Howard University, one of the nation’s most-famed HBCUs, has not been having a good year, and some fear the faculty and university are losing their spirit. This comes as the school’s Faculty Senate voted no confidence on the school’s Board of Trustees, NPR reports. “All of the negative news has not been good for [the…