culture
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Racism Explained to ‘New Blacks’ Like They're 5 Years Old
It seems as if every other week, another black celebrity sits down in front of cameras, microphones and a cunning white interviewer with a disarming smile and nefarious means, and tries to explain to the world the delusion that he or she is living in a post-racial America where inequality and prejudice no longer exist.…
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The Tragic Tale of TV’s 1st Black Stars Is Being Retold for the #OscarsSoWhite Era
Imagine a show so popular that when it’s on, even movie theaters stop films midreel and broadcast it so that audiences won’t stay home. For decades in the first half of the 20th century, that is exactly what The Amos ’n Andy Show was. During the heyday of radio, it was America’s most-listened-to program. Set in Harlem,…
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You May Choke Up at Some of the Items on Display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture
A wide-eyed Lance Spencer, 12, stood against the wall, between a stone block once used to auction slaves and a glass-boxed gallery where a worker was adjusting the lights on a shawl that belonged to abolitionist Harriet Tubman. “It’s cool!” the seventh-grader at Eliot-Hine Middle School in Washington, D.C., exclaims. “That’s what I think is…
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Let’s Be Real: Society Finds Black Women With Curvy Bodies ‘Inappropriate,’ Not Their Clothes
Patrice Brown, also known as #TeacherBae, is a fourth-grade teacher in Atlanta. Because of her ability to have her students excel in the classroom, Brown has received the Educator of the Month award. This week, however, Brown is being talked about all across social media, not for her body of work but for her body at work—and her…
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Calif.’s Recreational-Weed Bill Could Be a Game Changer
Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series that looks at the growing legal marijuana industry and its effect on the black community. Sue Taylor, 69, is a force of nature. The retired Catholic-school principal and grandmother of three is also one of the first African-American senior citizen owners of a cannabis dispensary. She’s based…
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Trouble With the Curve … in Fashion
“Please fit … please fit … please fit …” This was the prayer I sent up, standing in my underwear, eyeing the rack of gowns that had been chosen for me. After years of modeling, it wasn’t an unfamiliar scenario, but this was different. I wasn’t being fit for a retailer’s catalog or campaign, but…
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King of Pain: 20 Years Later, Tupac Shakur’s Problematic Genius Still Haunts Us
The aphorism goes, “Stars are born, not made.” I understood this twice in childhood: the first time I saw Magic Johnson on television, and the moment in Digital Underground’s “Same Song” video when a resplendent Tupac Shakur burst into the public consciousness on a chariot, wearing a dashiki and kufi, and holding a scepter that…
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Can You Sue Your College? President Obama Says Yes You Can
When I was in college at the University of Virginia, every year they had an event called Spring Fling. Spring Fling (as opposed to the much colder, gloomier Fall Fling) was the visitation weekend for all African-American students who’d been accepted to UVA, and it was a huge party. There were big concerts and fashion…