black
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Brutal Crackdowns, Hidden Poverty: How Preparations for the Rio Olympics Hurt Afro-Brazilians
In the next few weeks, Aug. 5-21, the city of Rio de Janeiro is going to host the 31st Olympic Games. Like a mother preparing her home for 500,000 tourists, Rio has swept the city’s poverty under the rug by increasing police and army presence in favelas. As a result, part of the local population…
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Alton Sterling, Philando Castile and the Hypocritical Screams of White America After the Dallas Cop Shootings
There was a moment when white Americans felt the dread black Americans live with daily. It happened Dec. 14, 2012, when a shooter entered a Newtown, Conn., elementary school and fatally shot 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7. The notion of safety was shown to be a fraud. The unfairness and vulnerability…
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Omarosa Manigault Is in Donald Trump's Army, but Who Is She Fighting For?
On Tuesday, a typical, but no less still unnecessarily combative, Omarosa Manigault spoke with MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts about her role in the orgy of audacious idiocy and political amateurism known as the Donald J. Trump for President campaign. As Omarosa spoke very seriously about an unserious person, I noticed that she was listed as the…
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4 Columbused Hairstyles That Have Made Headlines
In these very uncertain times, there are few things of which we can be absolutely sure. At the top of this short list are taxes, birth, death and cultural appropriation. As long as there are people walking this earth, dominant groups will find a way to “borrow” (read: steal) stuff from minority cultures and Columbus…
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Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios Buys TheGrio
Big changes are coming to the African-American news-media space: On Tuesday, Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios announced its acquisition of TheGrio, an online news website that focus primarily on black readers, The Wrap reports. “David Wilson and his founding partner Dan Woolsey have done an incredible job these past seven years building TheGrio, and we are one…
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Frances O. Thompson, 1st African-American Councilwoman of Hudson County, NJ, Dead at 74
Hudson County, N.J.’s first African-American councilwoman, Frances O. Thompson, died Sunday after battling cancer, NJ.com reports. She was 74. Thompson, who was director of the Hudson County Office of Minority and Women Business Enterprise, was first pushed into the public arena in 1985 after she was elected to represent Ward F as councilwoman, making her…
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Cedric Robinson, Author of Black Marxism, Died This Month to Little Fanfare, but Not Before He Changed My Life
I know that many are given to hyperbole upon learning that a person they revere has gone to be with the ancestors, but it is not an overstatement to say that Cedric Robinson, who passed away on June 5, truly changed my life. I was a graduate student in 2006 when I came across a…
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Naomi Campbell and the ‘Twice as Good’ as White People Myth
Recently, for The Guardian, Naomi Campbell shared an excerpt from a limited edition, two-volume book that chronicles her life as a groundbreaking and highly successful supermodel and all of the opportunities stemming from that. Yet for all that is shared in the excerpt—her as a supermodel, her speaking with world leaders as a contributing editor…
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On Being Black And Southern (And From South Carolina) At Times Like This
I’ve been a proud Black man from South Carolina for a few weeks north of 36 years. And, in all honesty, my state has always confused me. If I were ever asked to play word association with it, I would begin by telling the poor fool who asked the question to “grab a chair” because this…