culture
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Did War for the Planet of the Apes Come for DeRay Mckesson or Did Hotep Twitter Go Too Far?
The Planet of the Apes movie series has always been racially problematic. Starting with the originals in the late 1960s and ’70s and extending to the reboots starting in 2011, the films have a sort of hackneyed white-liberal-pontificates-about-race element to them that is at times compelling and other times insulting. Apes, even superintelligent apes, as…
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Watch: Filmmaker Shaka King Is Making Sure We Really See the Black Experience
Director and writer Shaka King is busy in the TV-and-film industry at the moment, but that wasn’t always the case. “It took a while, but once I started getting the work, it kept coming in. For a while I wasn’t getting shit, but ‘Mulignans’ really did a lot for my career,” says King, who hails…
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We Need to Talk About Sammy Sosa’s Face
Former Chicago Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa did an interview recently, and I don’t think anyone heard a word he said because Sosa now looks like a chewed eraser. I don’t know what happened to him or who hurt Sosa, but the onetime Cubs great—minus the steroid-use allegations that followed him through the end of his…
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Jason Whitlock Says Protesting Racial Injustice Is ‘Stupid’
The bulging, over-full colostomy bag who somehow maintains his rotund, deflated kickball-shaped figure despite participating in the daily yoga routine of perpetually contorting himself to always end up on white America’s side of any issue while criticizing and castigating anything or anyone remotely connected to blackness has opened his bile-spewing mouth again. Or—as some people…
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Watch: Color Complex: Untangling Black Women’s Hair
Skin color both unites and divides us. Whether you live in India, East Africa or Japan, the color of your skin shapes your identity and opportunities. Color Complex is a narrative series that explores how people of color around the world struggle for visibility and learn to navigate the prejudices and social hierarchies associated with…
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Jada Pinkett Smith’s Still in Her Feelings About That Tupac Film During an Atlanta Radio Interview
Jada Pinkett Smith’s outrage over the Tupac Shakur film All Eyez on Me has not subsided one bit. During an appearance Wednesday on The Ryan Cameron Morning Show With Wanda Smith on Atlanta radio’s V-103, while promoting her latest film, Girls Trip, with co-star Regina Hall and producer Will Packer, Pinkett Smith had a strong…
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How a Lack of Access to Healthy Food May Destroy Your Mind as Well as Your Body
It is widely known that a lack of access to fresh, healthy foods can contribute to poor diets and higher levels of diet-related diseases. In the case of brain health, we know that everyone who has a brain is at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, with the greatest risk factors being aging and genetics. But…
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Watch: Philly’s Real-Life Superhero
The first time Ariell Johnson imagined herself as a superhero was when she laid eyes on Storm of The X-Men. “I just saw this white-haired, white-eyed black woman flying around shooting lightning at people and I was like, ‘Who is this?’” she says. “I felt like I was just kind of watching other people’s adventures…
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Watch: These Little Grads Will Make Your Day With ‘Hey Black Child’
Congratulations are in order for the 2017 graduating kindergarten class at the Academy of Knowledge in Miami. The adorable kids were tasked with reciting the iconic poem “Hey Black Child” by Useni Eugene Perkins, and it’s everything you want it to be. Check out the cuties in the video above: Hey Black ChildDo you know…
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The Black Person’s Guide to Game of Thrones
I was talking to a friend about my weekend plans, and I told her that I probably wouldn’t do much because I’d probably have the bubble guts nervously awaiting the season premiere of Game of Thrones. Her reply perplexed me, shook me to my core and made me rethink many of the choices that I’ve…