culture
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Al Sharpton Explains Why His Thirst-Trap Selfies Might Steal Your Great-Auntie
Listen, if you’re not following the Rev. Al Sharpton on social media, what are you doing with your life? Lately, the civil rights leader has been posting selfies like the one above, and while he thinks it’s just a harmless promotion of a healthy lifestyle, the internet, namely black Twitter, thought it was hilarious meme…
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Tracing Your Roots: Is My Family’s Big Secret Presidential?
A reader wonders if she could be related to Andrew Jackson through one of his slaves. Dear Professor Gates: The story goes that my great-grandmother Laura Emily Jackson shouted to her only daughter, “I found my family. I found my family!” That night my grandmother went downstairs and found her mother burning all the family…
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Black Sororities Are a Straight, Cisgender Women’s Club, and That Needs to Change
Black sororities are a cisgender, straight women’s club. There, I said it! And as a straight, cisgender Afro-Caribbean woman, I noticed how my privilege shielded me from certain challenges as a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. I say this about my organization and others when I say it’s time to revisit what it…
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Black Music Month Playlist No. 4: Damn! Damn! Damn!
Editor’s note: Every Friday for the month of June, aka African-American Music Appreciation Month, aka Black Music Month, we’ll be creating a Spotify playlist based on the news of the week. Check out the stories behind playlist No. 1, playlist No. 2 and playlist No. 3. Real talk: This week was fucked up. There were…
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#Justice4Kyira Means Justice for Black Mothers Everywhere
Kyira Dixon Johnson’s story is one of the thousands, if not millions, of black mothers who have died because of the history of an inadequate health care system in this country. She is one of too many black mothers who have died because of this country’s legacy of structural racism. Kyira Johnson, affectionately called Kira…
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White Men Can’t Murder: Why White Cops Are Immune to the Law
Philando Castile was not murdered, because white police officers don’t murder black men. If that statement upsets you, allow me to cheer you up with a joke: What’s rarer than getting struck by lightning, being killed by a terrorist or winning the lottery? Well, in the past 10 years, 123 people or groups have hit…
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The Brother Also Rises: As ‘White Dave,’ Noah Coogler’s Got Next
It’s a wet, frigid and very late night on an Atlanta music video set, and the crew is feeling it. Specifically, Hollywood wunderkind Ryan Coogler is concerned about the artist, instructing him to zip up his coat. But despite being one of the hottest writer-directors in the industry, Coogler is merely an observer tonight, having…
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On Philando Castile, Terror and the Trauma That Remains
In Toni Morrison’s 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Beloved, the character Baby Suggs has survived more than 60 years in slavery and has lost eight children. She preaches a sermon to a group of formerly enslaved people and beseeches her audience to love themselves—their hands, their backs, their hearts, their laughter, their dances, their very flesh—because…
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Mobb Deep’s Prodigy and Sickle Cell: What You Need to Know About a Disease That Takes Down the Young
Forty years ago, Albert “Prodigy” Johnson of Mobb Deep, who died Tuesday at age 42, would likely never have had a music career. In 1973, those born with sickle cell disease had a life expectancy of just 14 years. Today that number is as young as 40 and extends to the late 60s. It’s better.…