culture

“This is the most important event of the first year of the United Nations Decennial on Afrodescendants.” That is how Celeo Alvarez, leader and founder of ODECO (Organization of Community Ethnic Development), the best-known organization of Afrodescendants in Honduras, characterized a recent gathering of activists, government representatives, academics and agency representatives from international organizations at…

My boyfriend and I recorded a sex tape one day and agreed to delete it months ago. Last night he took out his phone without warning or asking and played it. I was upset and felt gross. He apologized but seemed surprised at how upset I was. Was I wrong for being mad? Is this…

On July 21 at 11:46 p.m., Meek Mill, upset that Drake didn’t help him promote his recent album, took to Twitter to announce to his millions of followers that Drake doesn’t write his own rhymes. Then, 11 minutes later, he tweeted that he wouldn’t have even allowed Drake to be on his album if he…

Sisterhood is powerful. That’s the theme that has carried The Color Purple in all of its incarnations: a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in 1982, an Oscar-nominated film in 1985, a Tony-winning musical in 2005, and now, its latest iteration, a revival, back on Broadway after a very successful stint in London in 2013. It’s a theme…

I don’t have any tattoos. It’s not for lack of want, either. For the longest, I’ve wanted to get a sleeve. I feel like I would look cool with my entire left arm tatted up. I have ideas of tats that I want and where I’d place them. I’m a tat dreamer. There’s the “inshallah”…

It’s tough being a hip-hop fan in your mid-30s. Your formative years took place entirely during the genre’s “renaissance”–roughly 1992 to 2000—when classics dropped weekly and before ringtone rap, singles-driven albums and J-Kwon came in and stunk up the whole joint. You know what quality and effort sound like. Some hip-hop heads—the portly dudes rocking…

First things first. This column is not about how beautiful my daughter Emmy is. This is not about oh-my-goodness-please-stop-noticing-my-daughter’s-model-like-breathtaking-beauty. Emmy’s cute. Like every other 8-year-old girl in her class—and beyond. My concern is this. Often, when we are out and we see my friends, neighbors or co-workers, and they meet Emmy for the first time,…

They say money talks, which is a good thing because apparently we don’t like talking about money. According to a 2014 study completed by Wells Fargo, almost 44 percent of Americans consider personal finance to be one of the most difficult topics to discuss, outranking death, politics, religion and taxes.  We talk about everything from…

The movie Concussion, starring Will Smith and his odd African accent, opens on Christmas Day this year. It’s a movie about a forensic pathologist, Dr. Bennet Omalu, who became at odds with the NFL over his research and study into chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, which can be the end result of one too many hits…