Tyler Perry’s Netflix Drama ‘Straw’ Has Black Internet Divided
New Details Reveal the Man Behind Sade Robinson’s Death is Far Sicker Than We Thought
Could L.A. ICE Riots Stop the BET Awards? Here’s All the Tea
Elon Musk is Leaving the Trump Administration and Black Twitter is Buzzing
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Greed Ain't Good: Comrade Obama Sets Sights on Wall Street
Take cover, Wall Street. President Obama’s socialist Nazi wagon train is headed to your neck of the woods and the Hoss in Chief has reform on his mind! From the Washington Post: President Obama will head to Wall Street on Monday to try to breathe new life into efforts to overhaul the financial regulatory system,…
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Kanye's Disgrace
Kanye West is a disgrace to Beta males everywhere. His outburst last night at the VMAs was uncalled for. He should have been hogtied and ejected like Robert Deniro did Joe Pesci’s cowboy friend with all the lip in Casino. Kanye’s wasn’t an artful expression, an MC challenge or a PSA. It was a Beta…
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Jay-Z the Reader
I think Jozen Cummings is onto something with his essay about why Jay-Z should rap about marriage. At a basic level, what I took from the piece is the need for a black male artist of Hova’s stature to reveal more of himself—the parts that are hidden underneath the stereotypical gangsta-turned-mogul persona that he has…
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Food Justice! No Peas?
LaDonna Redmond’s new grocery store, Graffiti and Grub, overlooks Interstate 90 just inside the Chicago city limits. A short distance away, the El tracks cut overhead—and as she greets me and unlocks the door, a train clatters by. The store is right on the boundary between Englewood and Washington Park, two largely African-American neighborhoods on…
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A 'Strange' Fusion of Blackness
A rock-and-rolling, Los Angeles-based black teenager with a penchant for Buddhism and disdain for his mother’s Baptist church heads to Europe to find what he calls “The Real,” an elusive notion of the authentic experience. Such is the premise of Passing Strange, the Tony Award-winning 2008 Broadway musical that is now the subject of a…
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Holding Fast to Justice
Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that the Obama administration had increased funding for the Civil Rights Division, encouraged stricter enforcement of anti-discrimination laws and removed the Bush-era practices of putting important decisions in the hands of political appointees rather than career lawyers. Unfortunately, current and former Justice Department employees say much of…
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Kanye at the VMAs: When Keepin' It Real Goes Wrong
The most memorable performance at MTV’s Video Music Awards wasn’t Lady Gaga or even Lady B. Nope, as Daniel Kreeps from Rolling Stone notes, the most memorable — and disturbing — performance at the VMAs was carried out by rapper/producer Kanye West. And the brother wasn’t even trying. Now, we know Yeezy likes to speak…
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Serena, LeBron, Jordan and Risk-Reward
You won’t find much mention of Henry A. Landsberger amid the burgeoning discussions of sports this weekend, but his impact underpins almost every discussion. Landsberger isn’t a former professional athlete or sports commentator. Instead, he’s the social scientist who coined the term Hawthorne Effect, or put simply how the act of observation changes the observed.…
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This is the President. Get Used to It.
When an outraged Iraqi journalist threw a shoe at President George W. Bush during a visit to Baghdad, the incident was fodder for jokes and snickers. Mostly we laughed at the president’s lightning-quick reaction and the failure of the Secret Service to stop the guy from throwing not one, but two shoes. But even those…
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Joe Wilson's War
It’s a safe bet that when Rep. Joe Wilson shouted “You lie!” during President Barack Obama’s address to Congress, he had no intention of being the lone angry voice cutting through the silence of Obama’s pregnant rhetorical pause. Wilson got sandbagged by his Republican colleagues who suddenly fell silent—he thought he’d be part of a…