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How Rising Food Costs Affect Black Families
(The Root) — Like most Americans, you may have noticed the price of chicken has risen by nearly a quarter over the past year. Fresh vegetables and produce are increasingly more expensive. Feeding the average family of four is taking a toll on the poor, low-income and middle-class alike. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports…
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Lessons From Adria Richards' Firing and Online Threats Against Women
The African-American SendGrid developer was fired for tweeting a photo of men who she said were making sexist jokes during a conference. Writing at the Huffington Post, Soraya Chemaly takes on the “online thugs” who came after Richards with disturbing attacks when the story broke. Earlier this week developer Adria Richards tweeted a photo of…
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How Sriracha Explains the GOP's Problem
(The Root) — The Republican National Committee’s 100-page “Growth & Opportunity Project” report (pdf) came out this week, with the aim of diagnosing what went wrong for the GOP in 2012 and prescribing a fix for Republicans’ stark failure: Ninety-three percent of black voters, 71 percent of Latinos and 73 percent of Asian Americans cast…
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NYPD Tapes: The Truth About Stop and Frisk's Race Problem?
A recording of a New York City police officer and his commander is getting attention for capturing a conversation that seems to go to the very heart of the plaintiffs’ contention in Floyd v. City of New York that the NYPD’s “stop and frisk” policy is racially biased. Read and judge for yourself, from the…
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Achebe Took Literature About Africans Global
(The Root) — For many people all around the world, Chinua Achebe was their first African writer. Things Fall Apart has been read and loved (and studied) by millions. And among its many readers were a generation of other African writers for whom he blazed the trail. Of course, that wonderful 1958 book wasn’t literally…
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Wole Soyinka and J.P. Clark Reflect on Chinua Achebe's Death
Writer and Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka and poet and playwright J.P. Clark released a joint statement on Friday weighing in on the death of author Chinua Achebe, whom they refer to as a “brother” who was part of the “pioneer quartet” of contemporary Nigerian literature. In it, the two note that it may be…
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Meet the Man Who Breaks Army Barriers
On Friday, Gen. Lloyd Austin became the first African-American leader of the U.S. Central Command, which has a wide-ranging area of responsibility for 20 countries in the Middle East and southwest Asia. It’s not the first time in his 37-year career that he’s broken barriers for black members of the Army. He was also the…
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'Aunt Viv' to Wendy Williams: 'You Are Such a Demon'
There’s so much more drama in this one open letter than there ever was on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Actress Janet Hubert, who played the original Aunt Viv on The Fresh Prince, was replaced on the show back in the 1990s. She says she “doesn’t remember why [she] departed,” but it’s clear she won’t…
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Could Technology Revolutionize Black Hair Style Choice?
A panel of eight judges elected hair care technology company, Techturized, as the winner of the 2013 Blacks in Technology Business (BiT) Pitch Competition at SXSW Interactive in Austin, TX. Three of the four Techturized co-founders, Candace Mitchell, 25; Jess Watson, 22; and Chanel Martin, 28, presented eloquently as they described their target: African-American women, who make…
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Writer Chinua Achebe Dead at 82
Chinua Achebe, the internationally celebrated Nigerian author orf Things Fall Apart and numerous short stories, novels and essays rewriting and reclaiming the history of his native country, has died at age 82, the Associated Press reports: His eminence worldwide was rivaled only by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison and a handful of others. Achebe was…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
