culture
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Hate the Player, Not the Game: On Loving the Art of R. Kelly, Kanye and Cosby
This weekend, while driving with my windows down in 86-degree, sunny springtime weather, my car’s playlist (mostly comedy, hip-hop and old-school R&B) shuffled randomly to a 26-minute story from a 1968 comedy album. As a lover of storytelling, I couldn’t bring myself to hit the skip button as the winding, 26-minute story from the album,…
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Lynching Memorial: Ghanaian Artist Hopes Sculpture Captures Shared Pain Between African Americans and the Motherland
Kwame Akoto-Bamfo’s visa application for entry into the United States was denied last year. He’s from Ghana and was invited by the Equal Justice Initiative to build sculptures of African slaves at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which is dedicated to the victims of lynching in America. The memorial, along with the Legacy…
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Lester Holt Says Meek Mill Is a ‘Mature, Thoughtful Young Man’
Veteran newsman and NBC’s Nightly News anchor Lester Holt has seen a lot in over 30 years of journalism. He moderated the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and then-candidate Donald Trump, and his MSNBC colleague Lawrence O’Donnell called Holt’s May 2017 interview of Trump as president “possibly the most important televised presidential interview ever…
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Dear White People Vol. 2 Digs Deeper Into Modern-Day Segregation, Microaggressions, Twitter Trolls and More
There’s something so refreshing about entertainment that tackles larger issues within the black community. Getting to see black people live out their full lives, all while staring down racism, microaggressions, police brutality, modern-day segregation, biracial identity, sexual identity, abortion and more, is something that’s becoming far less foreign. Netflix’s Dear White People has returned with…
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Exclusive: Lezley McSpadden on Why She’s Considering a Run for Ferguson, Mo., City Council
On April 23, something unexpected happened to me. I woke up that morning to fly to Boston for a screening and panel discussion about my new documentary, Stranger Fruit, at Harvard’s prestigious Institute of Politics. The panel—with the film’s director, Jason Pollock, and my attorney, Benjamin Crump—was very moving. At one point during the panel,…
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Here’s a List of Books on Slavery That Kanye Should Read
Kanye West doesn’t care about books. If he hadn’t said as much in a 2009 Reuters interview, where he labeled himself a “proud nonreader of books,” we’d still know about his breathless commitment to ignorance just by listening to his latest rants blaming black people for crime, the Democratic Party and—most disgusting of all—slavery: At…
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White America Is ‘Publicly Lynching’ Black Men … but Not Kanye, Cosby or R. Kelly
The hullabaloo about Kanye West’s nonsensical rants, the Bill Cosby conviction and the movement to mute R. Kelly has exposed a clear line of demarcation with two opposing sides. The first side needs no introduction. Anyone reading this has probably seen at least a few of the extensive catalog of think pieces about why Kanye…
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10 ‘Heroes’ Who Should Win Awards Before Donald Trump Gets a Nobel Peace Prize
Donald Trump has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. No, seriously. Eighteen Republican lawmakers have nominated Sir Lies-a-Lot for a Nobel motherfucking Peace Prize because he threatened to jump-start a pre-emptive nuclear holocaust so many times that two hated rivals (North Korea and South Korea) decided they probably needed to get together before this…
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Ending the Policing of Black Bodies in Public Spaces Requires Not Just a Change of Policy but a Change of Heart
Chikesia Clemons at the Waffle House in Saraland, Ala. Myneca Ojo, Sandra Thompson, Sandra Harrison and a friend at Grandview Golf Club in York, Pa. Tshyrad Oates and a friend at LA Fitness in Secaucus, N.J. Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson at a Starbucks in Philadelphia. Brandon Ward at a Los Angeles-area Starbucks. Ezell A.…
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Kanye West and Charlamagne Open Up Space to Talk About Black Men and Mental Health
It is impolite—unethical, even—to armchair-diagnose anyone in the public eye with having a mental illness, mostly because of the stigma attached to being labeled “crazy.” (It has nothing to do with privacy laws, I’m sure.) But even if Kanye West does not have an official label he wants to share publicly, he is certainly acting…