culture
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Hey, PWIs! Diversity Is Great, but Inclusion Is Better
In Lawrence Ross’ new book, Blackballed: The Black and White Politics of Race on America’s Campuses, he highlights America’s little mythology problem. “For the past 400 years, African Americans tried to assist white Americans in recording a memory of racism, often to no avail,” Ross writes. “White America clings stubbornly to a collective narrative, what Gore…
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Solange Loses Her Wedding Ring on Mardi Gras Float
Solange Knowles, who has made New Orleans her home for years, lost her wedding ring Friday while she participated in weekend Mardi Gras festivities, reports People Style Watch. Seen below in this video before she hopped aboard the stiletto-shaped float hosted by Krewe of Muses, Solange, 29, says she’s “Bout to be hype!” #kreweofmuses here…
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Jay Z’s Tidal Donates $1,500,000 to Black Lives Matter
Jay Z’s fledgling music-streaming platform, Tidal, is donating $1.5 million to Black Lives Matter and several other local and national social-justice organizations from money raised at an October concert, reports Mic. The announcement was made Friday, the same day Trayvon Martin would have turned 21 years old. The Trayvon Martin Foundation will receive a portion…
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‘All the Awards Are Going to White People’: Why Black Award Shows Are Necessary
Is it wrong to honor one’s own? While the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences fails at being more diverse, entering the second year of #OscarsSoWhite, groups like the African American Film Critics Association seem ever more necessary as a way to acknowledge and celebrate the contributions of black filmmakers. They have no qualms…
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HBCU Football Stars Had a Coming-Out Party at Super Bowl I
When the Kansas City Chiefs took the field against the Green Bay Packers nearly a half-century ago in the first Super Bowl, they embodied the most obvious plotline of the game: How would the champions of the upstart American Football League fare against the established titans of the NFL? Less overtly, though, the Chiefs were…
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My Son Is Gone Because Someone Deemed Him a Criminal and Not My Child
My son is gone. It’s been two years since my husband left our home—on Feb. 7, 2014—to pick up our 14-year-old son, Andrew Joseph III, from the state fair, after he was late for curfew. We understood him being late this particular Friday night because Saturday would be Andrew’s confirmation—a Catholic ceremony where he would…
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I’m a Grown Man, but I Still Don’t Cuss in Front of My Dad
I remember the first time it happened. I was in sixth grade. It was my second week at St. Barts, a private Catholic school in Penn Hills, a suburb of Pittsburgh. My parents took me out of the city schools and sent me there because of its academic record and its athletic reputation. Actually, that’s…
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How to Get Over Writer’s Block
I’m a writer. As a writer, one of my least favorite things on this planet is Comic Sans. Coming in a close second is writer’s block. If you are a writer, there’s a better than 100,000,000 percent chance that at some point you’ve experienced a case of writer’s block. What is writer’s block? I’m sure…
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Before Cam, There Was Clyde, a Model of Sartorial Splendor
Tight. Zebra. Pants. By now you’ve heard of them—laughed at a few memes, or perhaps created a few memes of your own. But whether or not you’re fond of the fitted, ankle-length, zebra-print Versace pants, which Cam Newton placed into infamy, you’ve got to admit that the black-and-gold britches made a lot of noise. And…
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Are Hair Extensions for Girls a Bit Too Much?
I’ve been following the recent outrage on hair blogs about a mother, who shared a video of her 2-year-old daughter, Kailee, getting crochet twists, a “protective style,” which is more or less the latest euphemism for a weave. That statement is likely to get some backlash, so let me explain it up front. The differences…