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Figure Skater Surya Bonaly Flipped Her Way Into Our Hearts
Winter Olympic sports are notoriously lacking in racial diversity, but there have been a handful of black stars to emerge at the games over the years. One of them is Surya Bonaly. The figure-skating legend won the national title in France a record nine times and was a world silver medalist three times. She appeared at…
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How a Gay Football Star Could Change Black America
On Sunday night, Michael Sam made history. The college football standout and likely top NFL draft pick publicly acknowledged that he is gay, which would make him the first athlete in a major American professional team sport to announce he is gay at the very beginning of his career. Sam’s announcement is already one of…
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The Obamas and CVS on the Same Page About Quitting Smoking
Today one of the biggest national drugstore chains announced something that would once have been unthinkable: It will cease selling one of its most in-demand items, simply because the company believes that’s the right thing to do. Sounds hard to believe, right? Sure does. But could CVS Pharmacy’s decision to quit selling cigarettes as of Oct.…
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Actually, Mr. President, College Isn’t for Everyone
President Barack Obama’s most recent State of the Union address has been widely praised as one of his best ever—with even conservative critics like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich calling it “powerful.” It’s pretty much beyond dispute at this point that the president knows what he’s doing when he takes the podium. But with all…
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Highs and Lows of Obama’s State of the Union Speech
Tuesday night was State of the Union time again, which meant two things: President Barack Obama had to pull off the most difficult oratorical balancing act there is for any president: delivering a substantive policy speech that manages to inspire and move Americans. And it means that we do what we do after every State…
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Roe v. Wade Anniversary: For Black Women, the Issue Is Contraception
Today marks the 41st anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion. The decision is rightly credited with saving the lives of thousands of women: According to the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, prior to Roe, 5,000 women died annually from illegal abortions. So while many women are alive thanks to Roe, a strong argument can be…
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Hey, Madonna, Here’s Why Your N-Word Hashtag Wasn’t OK
Madonna managed to accomplish something this weekend that she’s been unable to do with her music for the last couple of years: She got people talking about her with the same gusto usually reserved for A-list celebrities. You know, like the kind she used to be. Unfortunately for the once-ubiquitous Material Girl, this latest turn…
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Hold On, Conservatives, Marriage Is No Poverty Cure-All
Though the candidates rarely discussed poverty during the 2012 presidential election season, it now seems to have replaced the so-called war on women as the topic neither party can stop talking about. For the first time in my lifetime, Republicans and Democrats are trying to prove that they—not their opponents across the aisle—have a solid…
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12 Years a Slave Won, but Black Hollywood Was Snubbed at Golden Globes
Last night’s Golden Globes may be considered a big night for the slavery epic 12 Years a Slave, which took home the award for best motion picture, drama. But it was not a big night for the film’s stars, director or frankly anyone else who happened to be black and in the room that evening.…
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Christie Scandal Could Cost GOP Its Great Black Hope
2014 is barely a week old, and yet the year has already given us its first political scandal—one that potentially has ramifications for years to come. A string of emails published Wednesday by the Bergen Country Record suggest that staffers in the office of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie coaxed a Port Authority staffer to…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
