culture
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Watch: Hashtag Revolution: #BlackTravel Takes the World by Storm
Hashtags have defined pop culture. You spot them all over social media, and now many of them have become popular phrases, especially when they highlight blackness: #BlackBoyJoy, #BlackLivesMatter, #GrowingUpBlack and the list goes on. #BlackTravel has become more than a hashtag; it’s a lifestyle, offering up various imagery of beautiful black people all over the…
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The Tragedies of Black Masculinity
I remember the feeling I had last week when I saw the text come in from a friend back home. The text read, “Y’all hear about North Park Elementary?” All I could do was think about the feeling I had in the pit of my stomach when I got the same text about the terrorist…
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Evelyn Lozada Has Returned to Basketball Wives, and So Far Tami Roman Can’t Take It
At one point during the season premiere of Basketball Wives, the returning Evelyn Lozada asks a very poignant question: “Why the fuck am I here?” One of my favorite colored-people proverbs comes to mind: A check is a check. Although Lozada successfully managed to flee VH1 and go on to OWN to star in her…
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The Racist, Homophobic History of an Ala. Church Gunning for Its Own Police Force
While advocates of civil liberties decry a powerful Alabama politician’s effort to push through a bill that would give a lily-white suburban church its own police force, many are unaware of the church’s long history of troubling race relations. The Alabama Legislature is now considering Senate Bill 193. If passed, the law would give Briarwood…
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Top 10 Blackest Experiences From the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca Film Festival, the badass downtown sister to golden girl Sundance, is back on these screens April 19-28. Like the New York neighborhood it’s named for, every year TFF becomes richer; fortunately, as with Hollywood (though not the nabe so much), black images, people and stories abound. There is much at the festival that…
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Forget Purple Rain: I Rewatched Prince’s Under the Cherry Moon Just for You and Hated Every Minute
Have you ever seen a film where a man and another man have a conversation while that man is in a bathtub, taking a bath, nekkid, wearing a sombrero while talking to the other man about made-up nonsense? I have seen that film. And that man in the bathtub was Prince, and that nonsensical scene…
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Sexual Assault Awareness Month: Why We Must Focus on Black Girls and Child Sexual Abuse
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Every year during this time, there are campaigns across the country that highlight the dangers of acquaintance or “date” rape. There are silent marches and “Take back the night” events on college campuses around the country, and generally a heightened focus on the epidemic of sexual violence among adult…
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Sometimes a Bitch-Ass N–ga Is Just a Bitch-Ass N–ga
Considering the considerable stigmas still attached to mental health—how we talk about it, how we treat it, how we regard people who have mental-health issues—our collective tendency to shoehorn some sort of untreated psychological disorder into the profiles of people who’ve committed especially heinous crimes is (somewhat) understandable. It allows us to finally have the…
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8 Songs You Probably Didn’t Know Were Touched by Prince’s Magic
Prince Rogers Nelson was arguably the most musically gifted artist in history (and by “arguably” I mean “definitely,” and I will fight anyone who says otherwise). Luckily for us and the music industry, he was willing to share those musical gifts with a wide range of artists. From helping to launch the careers of Sheila…
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‘But I’m Here to Tell You, There’s Something Else’ … Prince Week at The Root
Man, 2016 really took a weird turn after Prince died. Russians invading our elections. Wave after wave of surprising deaths. The ascension of Donald Trump against all the best logic and reason. So much happened, it made you wonder if the only thing holding the fabric of the universe together was a petite man with…