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  • Why No One Talks Back to Cathy Hughes

    If you’ve tuned in to black radio in the past few months, chances are you’ve heard “Reality Radio,” a series of announcements in which radio pioneer Cathy Hughes asks the black community to fight a new law in Congress that she claims would “murder black-owned radio.” Her definition of homicide? Performance Rights Act (HR 848),…

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  • What the ‘N’ in UNCF Stands For These Days

    Sixty-five years after a group of historically black colleges came together to form the United Negro College Fund, a mind is still a terrible thing to waste. The UNCF is continuing its mission of raising money to support its 39 member HBCUs as they fight to stay afloat amid the economic downturn. However, flush with…

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  • Cory Booker’s (Media) Deal With the Devil

    Newark Mayor Cory Booker was furious about the 8,000-word Esquire magazine profile of him and his beloved city. “I exploded,” he says in the new documentary, Brick City, “with just, rage, when I read it.” The 2008 article described Booker’s heroic quest to awaken the “city of zombies” and the “Goddamn Zulus” residing in Jersey.  Indeed,…

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  • Why Health Care is Organized Crime

    She had been ignoring signs of cancer for months. A relative of mine (I’ll call her “Mary”) had no health insurance. Self-employed, she made too much money to qualify for public health programs for the poor, but she did not make enough money to pay for private insurance. When debilitating pain rendered her unable to…

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  • Do the Right Thing Party Kit

    Yep, it’s been 20 years since we all headed to theaters to check out Do the Right Thing. Back then Spike Lee movies were Events, almost sacred rituals that united all corners of the black community. On June 30, 1989, whether you lived in a big city or small one, down South or in the…

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  • Why Mookie Did the Wrong Thing

    When Do the Right Thing was released 20 years ago, a generation of black writers and intellectuals became instantly radicalized by Spike Lee and Public Enemy’s vision of black America. Their fist-pumping black nationalist slingshots, along with The Autobiography of Malcolm X, were the perfect antidote for the isolation and alienation many black youth felt…

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  • Watching May 11, 2009

    Is the end of Vibe near? http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/magazines-newspapers/e3i3afff90a1a8b37533c27f21ab6947f86 Sex-starved Kenyan husband sues over boycott. http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/05/09/kenya.sex.lawsuit/index.html DC rapper Wale gets catching buzz http://bossip.com/109911/wale-the-next-dope-mc/#more-109911 Any thoughts on Wanda Sykes performance at nerd prom? https://www.theroot.com/blogs/browntable/wanda-sykes-sorry-no-marion-barry-jokes Obama’s Fourth of July speech will be in Egypt http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/08/AR2009050803843.html Women bullying women more at the workplace? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/business/10women.html?_r=1&em ‘The Wire’ Writer George Pelecanos’ latest…

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  • If We Ruled the (Literary) World

    Natalie Hopkinson is a Washington, D.C.-based author whose current projects deal with the arts, gender and public life. She is the author of Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City. Follow her on Twitter.  If I ruled the literary world, the African-American fiction section of bookstores would smell like cookies. Every time someone entered the…

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  • Who is the Most Awkward White Man on Television?

    Love The Roots. Hate the show. Is there a more awkward white man on television? Natalie Hopkinson is a Washington, D.C.-based author whose current projects deal with the arts, gender and public life. She is the author of Go-Go Live: The Musical Life and Death of a Chocolate City. Follow her on Twitter. 

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  • Boom, Bust, Repeat

    We heard barking as we approached the four-bedroom bungalow on a tidy suburban cul-de-sac near West Palm Beach. A 30-ish white man with sandy brown hair opened the door. “Is there a dog?” my mom asked with her Caribbean lilt. He caged the dog. We stepped inside, and my mother delivered the grim news: She…

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