culture
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Who Runs Baltimore? Black Women … and Their Hair?
It’s hard to find hope in a tragedy. And Freddie Gray’s death and the subsequent unrest are incredible tragedies. But out of that tough narrative, something else interesting has emerged. Black women (and their fierce hair) are running things. Never before with any news story in recent memory have I seen so many black women…
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Abuse and Torment: When Reality Television Finally Gets Real
This season of The Real Housewives of Atlanta is the realest season of the franchise. The storyline involving the disintegration of the marriage of celebrated entertainment attorney Phaedra Parks and her husband, Apollo Nida, has taken center stage, dwarfing the contrived confrontations and all-out mean-girl sessions that previously defined the show and the genre. Parks’…
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‘It’s an Amazing Time in American History’: Councilman and Others Talk Charges for 6 Officers
She said, “Accountability, you’re getting it today,” and the celebration followed. That was the reaction after Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby said those words Friday morning during a press conference announcing that six officers would be arrested and charged in the suspicious death of Freddie Gray. Mosby, who spoke to the crowd of…
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How Black Women Can Rescue the Labor Movement
After spending more than 25 combined years promoting the trade union movement and protecting the right to organize in the United States and around the world, we see the report “And Still I Rise: Black Women Labor Leaders’ Voices, Power and Promise”—named for a poem of resilience by the late Maya Angelou—as a love letter…
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Mayweather vs. Pacquiao: A Fight of Extremes
Saturday’s long-awaited Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao bout is a fight of differences. Of excess and access. Of past and present. Of crime and punishment (or lack thereof). Of the loved and the hated. It’s a fight that ultimately exposes gaps in how we think, how we feel and how we live. It underscores cultural chasms that are…
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Media’s Biased and Dehumanizing Coverage of Baltimore Fails to Tell the City’s Real Story
In what has become an all-too-familiar scene, America watched another of its cities erupt in protest this week, after yet another young black man died after interacting with police. This time the city was Baltimore and the victim was 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who suffered a severe spinal injury while in police custody on April 12.…
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‘We Are Not Thugs’
A mass of young people, 4,000 strong, locked arms Wednesday and marched from Amtrak’s Penn Station in Baltimore down to City Hall to protest the death of Freddie Gray. As they marched, a student yelled over the loudspeaker, “When you don’t say something when it’s your neighbor, what will you do when they come for…
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Poll: Will You Be Watching the Fight of the Century?
Who’s got an extra hundred bucks lying around to put in the pockets of these multimillionaire fighters? That’s the price of pay-per-view to catch what is sure to be the most-talked-about fight in decades. Latest odds are on Floyd Mayweather to defeat Manny Pacquiao in the Saturday-night match at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand. If you’re…
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Your Kid’s Hair: Fight It, Put a Hat on It or Let It Be?
Your kids’ hair. They don’t want you to comb it. They never want you to comb it. Maybe they won’t sit still. Maybe they’re tender-headed and the combing hurts. Maybe they’ll just mess it right back up two seconds after you went through all that work. Maybe they’re babies. Babies are the ultimate in not…
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The Hypocrisy of Applauding the Baltimore Mom While Condemning the Protesters
Even before Toya Graham, the Baltimore mother of six who was captured on video “disciplining” her son, began making the news rounds, she was already being hailed as a hero. The video of her dragging her 16-year-old son, Michael, who was throwing rocks at police, from Baltimore’s melee and slapping him repeatedly in the face…