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A Dried-up, Shriveled Little 'Raisin'
I still remember the sore elbows I got snuggled up to our fuzzy 19-inch to watch three nights of Alex Haley’s “Queen.” That was 15 years ago. On Monday, Feb. 25, a new generation of 12-year-olds will suffer their boney joints watching ABC’s “world premiere movie event” — Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun.”…
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Lies and Consequences
Call it a comedy of editors. Looking back on the initial media blitz surrounding Love and Consequences, the auto-myth-ography by Margaret B. Jones (nee Margaret “Peggy” Seltzer), laughs come first, but anger comes hardest. Take last week’s 2,000-word New York Times profile about the author and her tall tale of gang life in South Central…
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Viva Vogue Italia!
Don’t let “America’s Next Top Model” fool you—the politics of the runway are rarely so neatly wrapped up. Sure, four of the show’s nine winners so far have been black (plus Boricua Jaslene Gonzalez), but catwalks in the States and overseas have been slow to integrate as industry insiders still claim that non-white models just…
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One of the Girls: BBF in the City
When the prophesies finally turned out to be true—that they are making a movie, that all four girls are in and that there is going to be a wedding—scores of the devout laid in wait, salivating for more manna to rain down from the Sex and the City: The Movie mountaintop. But one particular crumb…
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What My Father Could Learn From Usher
On my desk, in my office, is a picture of my mother and me. I might be 2 weeks old. She’s cradling me with one arm against her chest, her slender fingers smoothing down my baby hair. She’s got a close-cropped afro, and we’re in somebody’s kitchen—maybe ours, but probably my Grandmommy’s. There’s a bag…
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Beef 2.0
*Sayin’ yo momma black, his momma this, his momma that/Then he get mad and wanna scrap/We stay mad about 10 minutes then it’s like back on the bike… — “Back in the Day” by Ahmad —In middle school, battles for respect weren’t decided on dodge ball courts or black asphalt. Back then folks lived or…
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Over the Rainbow: Angie and Jo
Okay, so there’s Maddox from Cambodia, Pax from Vietnam, Zahara from Ethiopia, Shiloh from Namibia (well, born there, anyway), and now, new additions, twins Vivienne and Knox, born in France. In less time than it takes to get an undergraduate degree, Angelina Jolie, with some help from partner Brad Pitt, has earned a way more…
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The Beautiful 'Black List'
HBO’s newest documentary The Black List is a lot like the imagined coffee table book that inspired it—super-sized with lots of pictures meant to incite conversation. The film’s images rotate like a Who’s Who in Black America. Did you know that Slash from Guns N’ Roses was black? Or that the former president of Planned…
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Keep 'Gossip Girl' White
Months ago I got a message from an old schoolyard chum, “It’s our 10-year anniversary. Can you believe it?” The thought of a reunion had me super excited. We could flip through our high-school memories like flash cards. The time Ms. Dumoski taught an entire period of trig with her skirt tucked into her control…
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What Hope Can't Fix
As Jennifer Hudson closed her eyes, holding that last note of the national anthem at the Democratic National Convention in August, one can only imagine what she was dreaming in that brief moment. Certainly not about the nightmares October would bring.As much of the country is brimming with promise, poised for hopeful discussions about how…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
