culture
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Tased to Death
The grisly details of Baron Pikes’ violent death are remarkable. There’s the fact that Officer Scott Nugent jammed his Taser into the unarmed 21-year-old nine times in 14 minutes. There’s the fact that Pikes was handcuffed during each of those 50,000-volt shocks. And there’s the fact that witnesses heard Pikes, who was supposedly resisting arrest,…
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Book Excerpt: 'Palace Council'
Palace Council (Knopf, 2008) Prologue: “The Council” The lawyer was nervous, and that was odd. His hands trembled on the steering wheel, and that was odder still. He had learned in the war that there was no sin in being afraid as long as the others never knew. He understood that courage was a discipline.…
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Cracks and Assets
Summer is officially in high gear, making it a perfect time for an open memo to all those women addicted to showing off their cracks and assets in public. Do the rest of us a favor—don’t! It’s OK to show a little décolletage, as long as you keep your headlights a little dim. I’m not…
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Black Like Mommy, White Like Me
Simone snuggled up beside me and pointed to my face. “Mommy,” she said, “is a black girl.” How observant, I thought, for a 3-year-old to make such a distinction. “Yes,” I said, “Mommy is a black girl.” “Simone,” she continued, “is a white girl.” In all the time I had dreamed about being a mother…
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Black Skin, Blue Passport: Is It Me?
As is often the case in the United States, sometimes I have trouble telling when people are racist or just plain rude. When I checked into my Mexico City bed and breakfast—which had received rave reviews on from Trip Advisor—I sensed a disconnect between the pleasant tone the owner adopted over e-mail (he even complimented…
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Keeping Him Healthy
Health news is almost always depressing when it comes to people of color, especially our black men. Our husbands, fathers, brothers, sons and friends are at least 50 percent more likely to die of a heart attack, stroke, complications from diabetes and cancer than their white counterparts. These numbers represent real men, and it just…
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Twenty-Five Minutes of Hell
Too tired, too old, too fat, too busy. If these are the excuses you use to bail on your workout then eventually you’ll be too sick and too dead for it to even matter. The most common reason people give for not exercising is the time factor and, yes, I understand that you are over-scheduled…
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Over the Rainbow: Angie and Jo
Okay, so there’s Maddox from Cambodia, Pax from Vietnam, Zahara from Ethiopia, Shiloh from Namibia (well, born there, anyway), and now, new additions, twins Vivienne and Knox, born in France. In less time than it takes to get an undergraduate degree, Angelina Jolie, with some help from partner Brad Pitt, has earned a way more…
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When Thugs Cry
It is time to pull this car over and give you gangsta rappers something to cry about. Cry about genocide in Darfur. Cry about the lack of support for the people in Burma. Cry about the displaced New Orleans folks that got gutted and uprooted like seaweed. Cry about poverty, teen-pregnancy rates and joblessness. But,…
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Who Gets Paris, Prince and Blanket?
The further postponement of the child custody hearing for the children of the late Michael Jackson is evidence that lawyers for both Debbie Rowe and Katherine Jackson are keenly aware that neither woman is perfectly positioned to withstand the scrutiny of a child custody hearing. But Katherine Jackson has a considerably stronger case for custody…