culture

For hard-core jazz fans, Barack Obama is the second African-American president. Tenor saxophonist Lester Young was the first. He didn’t win 365 electoral votes, but he won the vote of Billie Holiday, who nicknamed him The President aka Prez. Young introduced a dynamic new approach to the saxophone; his playing had a leaner tone and…

Something to chuckle about from the BBC: Software giant Microsoft has apologised for editing a photo to change a black man’s head to that of a white man. The picture, showing employees sitting around a desk, appeared unaltered on the firm’s US website. But on the website of its Polish business unit the black man’s…

The ax is falling on after-school programs and working parents are scrambling to find a way to make ends meet while giving their kids a good quality of life. From the Wall Street Journal: As schools open their doors this month and next, closings and cutbacks at thousands of after-school programs nationwide have parents scrambling…

“He look-a like a man.” Remember Ms. Swan? Mad TV’s maybe-Korean, maybe-Icelandic, slightly androgynous nail technician played with adroit cultural ambiguity by Jewish-American actress Alex Borstein? Ms. Swan could never give anyone a straight answer and her subterfuge became her most famous catchphrase, “He look-a like a man.” We laughed because the answer was so…

What stood out most as Caster Semenya faced reporters at last week’s track and field world championships was that she’s just a kid. Baby-faced and leery, she parceled out answers to ostensibly innocuous questions. “What was your running background before this year?” But a more insidious query lurked for the teen: What kind of freak are…

This article was originally posted on NewsOne: Writing about Black people is hard. There are more than 40 million of us in the United States alone, each running around with different ideals, interests, occupations, and income levels. With all of that going on, things are bound to get complicated. So how can the American news…

Parts of the south Sudan are in a bad way regarding food rations. The UN warns that 1.3 million are in need of food aid. From Al Jazeera: The number of people needing assistance has surged since the beginning of the year due to inter-tribal conflict, poor rains and the high cost of food commodities in…

Eight years after a plane crash ended the life of 22-year old Aaliyah Dana Haughton, better known the the singular Aaliyah, Jayson Rodriguez tries to put her career and possibilities in perspective. From MTV: Ever since the Detroit singer and dancer debuted in 1994 with Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number, we all watched Aaliyah…

Admittedly, I was suspicious of news that Tameka “Tiny” Cottle and Antonia “Toya” Carter—concubines of hip-hop royalty, T.I. and Lil Wayne, respectively—were going to have their own reality show on BET: Was this BET’s answer to The Real Housewives of Atlanta? Did we really need to see The Baby Mamas of Bankhead? But Tiny &…

Roxanne’s revenge was sweet indeed. Twenty-five years after the first queen of hip-hop was stiffed on her royalty checks, Dr. Roxanne Shante boasts an Ivy League Ph.D. – financed by a forgotten clause in her first record deal. “This is a story that needs to be told,” Shante said. “I’m an example that you can…