culture

Who is Bill Clinton? Bill Clinton is a white man. Why is Bill Clinton in the news today? Bill Clinton is a white man who happened to be president of the United States from 1992 to 2000. His wife, Hillary Clinton, a white woman, is running for president now. Bill Clinton was a popular president…

Remember last season when Olivia Pope was kidnapped and put up for sale on a global auction block (during Black History Month, no less)? President Fitz Grant had selected his old friend, Andrew Nichols, to be his vice president, but as it turned out, Andrew had designs on Fitz’s wife and his job. So Andrew had Olivia…

At some point I’m going to have to accept that my relationship with Empire is like Charlie Brown and the football. Against my better judgment, I’m always ready to get invested in a storyline, and then the writers resolve it before the commercial break. In this episode, “A Rose by Any Other Name,” Lee Daniels…

Many like to use the metaphor of darkness when it comes to depression. My experience is more like a fog: a thing descending slowly; a thick something that surrounds me and distorts the vision of myself and the world around me. One day, there is nothing but sun, and without warning, things that felt like…

Last week, President Barack Obama used his pardoning power to commute the sentences of 61 additional nonviolent drug offenders in an effort to at least moderately correct the insurmountable injustices delivered through America’s war on drugs. The war on drugs (and the mass incarceration that is its result) is heavily in the news because of…

The name Village Capital may evoke visions of some run-of-the-mill financial-services operation, but in fact, it’s a startup-development organization with a decidedly different goal. “Our mission has been to democratize entrepreneurship,” says Nasir Qadree, Village Capital’s sector manager for education. “Village Capital finds, trains and invests in entrepreneurs solving global problems.” It’s a lofty goal,…

Johnnie Cochran meets O.J. Simpson at the jail with a spread of suits and accessories appropriate for a photo shoot. It’s a big day, the last day that the defense will present its, well, defense. In the courtroom, O.J. wants to make a statement. He says he “did not, could not and would not” commit…

Some events from the summer of 1964 in Mississippi are well-known. It was Freedom Summer, tragically highlighted by the brutal murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. The outrage ultimately led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. At that same time, two groups of young men,…

My mom was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer in November 2012. At that point, she was given four to six months to live. But she held on for an entire year, not succumbing to the disease until November 2013. Her diagnosis, while devastating, was not a surprise. She had been a smoker for more…