culture

To most everyone, the prototypical sufferer is an insecure, sickly-thin, young, white woman who looks in the mirror and sees a fat girl. It is Karen Carpenter, singing the sad songs of the 1970s as she starved herself and finally died in 1983. It is so many Hollywood actresses, splashed across magazine covers, their pretty…

Not long ago, suicide and African Americans were almost never mentioned in the same breath. Despite confronting challenges from slavery to Jim Crow to structural racism, blacks rarely took their own lives. It was a positive health disparity. Until now. There is alarming evidence that the suicide rate for young African-American men is escalating, and…

Some women think their kids can do no wrong, while others are brutally honest: “My kids are a pain,” began Rebecca Land Soodak, in the advertisement she recently posted on craigslist, in search of the perfect nanny for her Manhattan-based family of five. “If you cannot multitask or communicate without being passive aggressive, don’t even…

On the day of his induction into Pro-Football Hall Of Fame in 1985, O.J. Simpson should have said to the crowd in Canton, Ohio: “Thank you guys so much….This is great,” then turned, taken one last look at his old life, draped his yellow blazer across his broad shoulders, hopped on his spaceship and flew…

Cross-town rivalries are an essential part of baseball lore. During the ’50s, the World Series often came down to a matchup between the Brooklyn Dodgers or New York Giants and the New York Yankees. The Bay area has had its two teams, the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A’s battle in the World Series in…

There’s a drumbeat out there. If you haven’t heard it because of all the political coverage, get ready. It’s going to become more insistent right through to Feb. 17, 2009. That’s the date the government-mandated, digital-television transition, aka, DTV, kicks in. If your television reception comes via rabbit ears or from a rooftop antenna, you…

Black food is in. And we’re not talking about your grandmother’s fried chicken or Aunt Sadie’s peach cobbler. Instead, it seems that with food, the darker it is, the better it is for you. From forbidden black rice to black tea, black is back…not that it ever really went away. For many cultures, dark-hued foods…

Our nation’s future lies in science and technology. Already in high demand, engineers and scientists will be needed even more in years to come. As the White House celebrates the contributions of Historically Black Colleges and Universities this week, they should be looking at the demand as an opportunity and a challenge. There is a…

“Are all of your friends white?” That was not the response I’d expected after telling a member of my study abroad program that I’d graduated from a PWI: Predominantly White Institution. She looked at me as though I’d attended school on Mars instead of at my racially-diverse state university, located a mere eight miles away…

The start of the NFL season brings thousands of previews. This isn’t unusual, but no league is easier to forecast at the top nor harder to forecast in the middle and bottom. Here’s a very concise look at the NFL. New England is the best team. Indianapolis is second and those two are followed by…