culture

This week’s episode of Scandal was one of those episodes during which the majority of time was simply spent positioning characters for what’s to come in future episodes. Here’s a quick recap of where everyone landed. Olivia is on to Jake. While Olivia Pope has dessert at her father’s house with Jake Ballard and his new fiancee, Vanessa,…

Last week, in response to the lynching photo found at a Joe’s Crab Shack in Minnesota, I wrote a piece explaining “post-racial racism” (which has also been referred to as “Chad Crow”—Jim Crow’s laid-back cousin): In post-racial 21st-century America, no one actually wants to admit to being racist. They’ll do racist things, say racist words,…

What do Prince, fine food and Soul Train have in common? All three are major obsessions of the Roots’ Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson. The Philadelphia-born drummer wrote about one of his passions in 2013’s Soul Train: The Music, Dance, and Style of a Generation. Now he’s dishing on his love of eating well with his new…

HBCUs have come under fire in recent years as questions abound as to whether these academic institutions are doing enough to equip black students for careers in high-growth industries and fields related to science, technology, engineering and math. Despite research showing that HBCUs produce the majority of black science and engineering graduates who pursue advanced…

Scathing diversity reports from major tech companies revealed that women make up less than 30 percent of employees. For minority employees, this number staggers as low as 4 percent. The culprit? Unconscious bias in an industry largely dominated by white men. “We need to have transparent discussions on what bias is and own it. Then…

Bob Shapiro is at the courthouse offering a “Good morning” to Gil Garcetti, who is not here for any of Shapiro’s shenanigans. “We barely recovered from the Rodney King riots of two years ago, and now you and Johnnie are standing in a damn pool of gasoline playing with matches,” Garcetti snaps.  Shapiro insists that…