culture
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Spreading the Word: Meet the Man Who Created a Spotify for Church Sermons
Like many preachers, Nicholas Richards felt a special affinity for the pulpit. “I didn’t choose the church,” he said during a recent interview. “The church chose me.” Don’t take our word for it. Watch him speak on Isaiah 9:1-6 as he interprets the passage, adapting and connecting it to contemporary life and classic literature. Richards,…
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In Colson Whitehead’s Imaginative The Underground Railroad, the Train to Freedom Is Real
Previously nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and a MacArthur “genius” grant, Colson Whitehead has now been nominated for a National Book Award for his latest novel, The Underground Railroad, itself already selected as an Oprah’s Book Club pick for 2016. Whitehead is also the author of John Henry…
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‘Real Sista’: Does My Natural Hair Make Me More ‘Down for the Cause’?
Over the weekend, at a street festival in Brooklyn N.Y., an older gentleman walked up to me and a friend (who also has natural hair) and handed us fliers about a social-justice meeting. While handing them to us, he said, “For my real sistas; I know you two are down for the cause.” I can…
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Unique Views Podcast, Episode 13: How Crab Dinners Made BuzzFeed's Quinta B. Broke
“Hate“ is a strong word. It should only be used for intense situations like brussels sprouts, Donald Trump and the cancellation of NBC’s The Black Donnellys. In this vein, I say that I do not hate Danielle Young, aka Patti LaDanielle, aka Ms. Patti Patti. But she’s close. She’s kind of like broccoli, Mike Pence and…
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Nationwide School 'Walk-ins' Organized to Demand Educational Justice for Black and Brown Communities
On Thursday the union-affiliated Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools organized “walk-ins” in 200 cities and 2,000 public schools in black and brown communities to fight against “the long-standing and systematic underfunding of their public schools,” AROS said in a press release. Hundreds of affiliated parent, education and student groups rallied behind a six-point platform, which includes: a call for the…
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The Birth of a Nation Is an Important Film Worth Seeing Despite Its Flaws
When Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation won both the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in January, Parker thanked God and Sundance when accepting the awards. The realization that audiences were ready for a story about Nat Turner, a black man from Virginia at the center of a slave revolt that…
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Watch: How Did the Stars of The Birth of a Nation Practice Self-Care While Shooting This Intense Film?
Black trauma stems back as far back as slavery. Knowing that our ancestors were treated worse than animals—brutalized, dehumanized and demeaned—and that this terrible legacy of racism has carried on to our modern and “progressive” times is a painful truth that we must face every day. When movies like The Birth of a Nation are…
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Review: The Birth of a Nation Isn't Strong Enough to Shake Director's Past
Editor’s note: This review contains spoilers. The Birth of a Nation reminded me of Old Man Harris. He was a bluesman in the Mississippi Delta before he became the director of the men’s chorus at my childhood church. He claimed that he’d played with the likes of B.B. King, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf before…