culture

Whatever your opinion, Eric Holder is certainly an Attorney General looking to make an impact. To that end, he and the rest of the Obama administration are making a concerted effort in the enforcement of civil rights, particularly in the areas of voting, housing and bank lending. This move is a departure from the former…

Wright was far from sympathetic to the black church. With characters like Bigger’s God-fearing mother, he treats religion as a narcotic that allays black suffering without challenging it, but for 12 Million Black Voices he deploys the hypnotic rhythms of the pulpit to evoke the bare, exposed lives of black people. In a powerful passage…

A gem from Afro: By a slim margin of just 38 votes, a Black woman has become mayor of a small town in northern Italy. Sandy Cane, 48, won the election earlier this summer and will govern the town of Valceresio, population 5,300, which borders Varesotto and the Swiss confederation of Ticino. She will serve…

Ethiopia decided to lend a neighbor a hand but many in Somalia do not appreciate the help. From Al Jazeera: Hundreds of troops reportedly entered the strategically important town of Beledweyne on Saturday. Abdinur Ahmed Maow, a local resident, told The Associated Press news agency that the armed opposition fighters had left “without a single…

Whitney Houston has been in the game a long time and she has jumped back into the R&B fray with “I Look to You.” From the New York Times: “I Look to You,” with Ms. Houston’s longtime mentor Clive Davis as her co-producer, is more subdued, canny and cautious. She still sings about the power…

“How It Feels to Be Colored Me”: Zora Unbound If that was Wright’s message, the book missed its mark. As a wake-up call describing how blacks lived in the North and how they really felt about whites, Native Son had tremendous impact, which continues to reverberate today. Bigger’s graphic murders—and the bottled-up violence that pushes…

Caster Semenya‘s testosterone levels were found to be within the range that allows her to participate in women’s races, despite being higher than usual, according to a press report in South Africa. Read the details on the Guardian…

From CNN: The first search of Michael Jackson’s bedroom a day after his death found marijuana, skin-bleaching and hair-growing ointments, anti-insomnia pills and empty bottles of several anti-anxiety drugs, according to court documents unsealed Thursday. A substance initially suspected to be tar heroin proved not to be a narcotic, according to a source with knowledge…

From Black America Web: …what many people don’t know is that Kennedy helped a number of African-Americans professionally and politically. “Ron Brown never would have been commerce secretary if it had not been for Ted Kennedy,” said Michael K. Frisby, a former national politics reporter for The Wall Street Journal and The Boston Globe. “He…