culture
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Everything You Think You Know About the Death of Mike Brown Is Wrong, and the Man Who Killed Him Admits It
Updated Wednesday, March 15, 2017, 3:45 p.m. EDT: Earlier today, Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery, who uncovered the U.S. District Court document this article was based on, tweeted the following: And this: Lowery understandably disagrees with some of the conclusions found in our original article. It is not unusual for two parties to hear testimony…
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Being Mary Jane Recap: This Isn’t Going to End Well
I’ll give it to Mary Jane—Justin certainly is a lot more attractive now that he’s dropped the icebox where his heart used to be, but that still doesn’t make up for why Mary Jane and Justin are on the pathway to a hookup. With the midseason finale next week, there will soon be an end…
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Why Can’t We Cover Trump’s Twitter Fingers and His Presidency?
President Vladimir TrumPutin has been a busy man since taking office. Mostly he’s been busy hiding his taxes from the American public, and hiding his relationship with Russian operatives. He’s surely spent time keeping the video of paid Russian thots R. Kelly-ing all over a hotel room out of the hands of the public, and…
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What Trump’s Tweets Teach Us About Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown and Emmett Till
Explaining racism is hard. When you’re illustrating the complexities of racial prejudice in America, it is difficult to bridge the gap between understanding and skepticism in a populace pretending to listen with its arms folded, ready to dismiss any reasonable, salient point that demonstrates the existence of privilege and bigotry. Sometimes it’s not that people…
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Trans Women Are Women. This Isn’t a Debate.
Nigerian writer and feminist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been a favorite of mine since I first saw her “We Should All Be Feminists” speech. It was just a few months shy of Beyoncé’s release of her iconic anthem “***Flawless,” which heavily sampled Adichie’s stripped-down thesis on what feminism means. I was inspired by seeing another…
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I Am My Trans Sister’s Keeper
Mesha Campbell. Jamie Lee Wounded Arrow. JoJo Striker. Keke Collier. Chyna Gibson. Ciara McElveen. Jaquarrius Holland. Their names and faces lit up my laptop in a macabre montage. In the first few months of 2017, seven transgender women have been murdered—four within a single week, and most of them black. It is the continuation of…
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How the AMERICAN WOMAN Project Aims to Make Black Women the Face of America
When you think of the all-American-girl type of woman, you probably think of a sun-kissed, blond-haired woman, wearing a size 6 dress and either “leaning in” or happily being a doting, work-from-home mom. Sure, some may say there’s nothing wrong with either of these representations, but there are other types of American women who are…
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Tech Needs to Do the Work to Find Black Excellence, but You Can Do Your Part, Too
The Uber fallout of recent weeks makes something my grandmother used to tell me more important than ever now: “To get something you don’t have, you’ll have to do something you haven’t done. You’re a black woman. So, to do that, you’ll have to work twice as hard to get half as far.” However, the…
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Scandal Recap: Jake the Snake
Scandal has been on hiatus for a couple of weeks, so to refresh your memory, Frankie Vargas was shot and killed the night he won the presidential election. One of his campaign volunteers, Jennifer Fields, left a voicemail for the FBI saying that Cyrus Beene was responsible. Then someone blew up Jennifer’s cabin. Cyrus’ ex-lover…
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Ciara Is a Waste of ‘Crunk&B,’ but Future Is a Terrible Person
Roses are red, violets are blue and Future is a terrible fucking person. This should not be a novel idea to anyone who has ever read a Future interview, scrolled through Future’s social media accounts or listened to most of his catalog. No one should need a member of the Mystery Machine to connect the…