culture

When prosecutors present a case to a grand jury, they do so solely for the purpose of securing an indictment and proceeding with the case. Period. That is the reason evidence is gathered and carefully presented during the secret and seemingly enigmatic proceeding. Listening to Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty speak at the press conference announcing…

The last thing I ever expected to happen during a trip to a suburban-Connecticut pool party was that my son would fall in love with guns. Big, bazooka Super Soaker water guns, to be exact.  At the time, my son was a freshly minted 3-year-old who instantly became fascinated with water “gums.” He mispronounced “guns”…

“In postapocalyptic and apocalyptic narratives when they show the whole world freaking out about something that is happening to the Earth, they never show Africa,” says Nnedi Okorafor, the author of 11 books of science fiction and fantasy, among them the award-winning Zahra the Windseeker, The Book of Phoenix and Who Fears Death. “I wasn’t…

In 2015, black Twitter continued to slay with brilliance like #AskRachel and #ThanksgivingWithBlackFamilies, President Obama ran out of damns and started checking folks who “wanna pop off,” and Black Lives Matter cemented itself as an enduring force with which to be reckoned. Indeed, 2015 has been punctuated with black people being bold, brave and brilliant at…

My husband and I had sex after we attended his Christmas party. For the first time in years, he did not come too soon and I was able to climax. Normally, sex is routine, almost recipe sex. He has a premature ejaculation (PE), he’s done for the night and neither of us experiences an orgasm.…

I say this with a sober mind and honest heart: I do not think Beyoncé is a bad actress. Yes, I will allow you a moment to sit in awe of my bravery. No, you cannot claim that I am only saying this because I worship at the altar of Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter. I don’t…

Baseball may still be billed as the national pastime, but football actually surpassed it in popularity a long time ago. So for anyone born and raised in the United States, challenging the NFL is just unthinkable. Dr. Bennet Omalu wasn’t born and raised in this country, however. Had he been, it’s doubtful that the forensic…

It’s cold, with really short days in the winter. Like, sunset is at 3 p.m. And it’s white. Like, really white—as in the descendants of Vikings. But in the city center of Oslo, Norway, black American expats are living what seems to be the dream of Martin Luther King Jr.: being judged by the content…

I’ve been having this Christmas fantasy for a few years now. Tonight my husband and I, along with our two daughters, should be putting the finishing touches on our Christmas tree, wrapping last-minute gifts and watching The Grinch Who Stole Christmas in matching brand-new pajamas while sipping hot chocolate. I never had that experience growing…

I’ve been fine all year, but the closer it gets to the holidays, the more depressed I get. I don’t think I have depression, I’m just not into Christmas. This happens every year. I look at all these people on social media at holiday parties, and see the couples being all lovey-dovey, and I just…