culture
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Was It Tanzania, Not Britain, Where the Miniskirt Was Invented?
In the 1960s, young women of all races around the world made the miniskirt a racy, fashion statement. The garment grew in popularity in the 1970s. The mainstream fashion industry claimed the miniskirt as a British original popularized by Mary Quant, owner of the chic London boutique Bazaar. Yet, when I was doing research on…
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CNN Hopes to Answer What Really Happened the Night Malcolm X Was Killed
Almost 50 years ago, Malcolm X, who had risen to prominence as one of the most outspoken and public faces of the Nation of Islam, was gunned down inside the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. And ever since his death Feb. 21, 1965, there has been speculation as to who had the civil rights…
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Amber Rose vs. the Kardashians: How Race and Class Reshape This Slut-Shaming Beef
If an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, what does a tweet for a tweet do? If you’re talking Khloe Kardashian’s newly minted social media beef with Amber Rose, it probably leaves most of the world entertained, while exposing the fact that even so-called sexual liberation comes with the baggage of race…
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August Wilson: He Wrote About the ‘Frustration and the Glory’ of Being Black
American Masters—August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand, airing on PBS Feb. 20, gives an inside look at a private man referred to by many as an outsider. Wilson, the brilliant Pittsburgh-born playwright who wrote 10 plays—nine of which took place in his hometown—covering 10 decades, explored the cultural ideas and attitudes of what…
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The Day Len Bias Died Changed My Life
Editor’s note: During Black History Month, the focus is usually on historical figures who loomed larger than life, paving the way for the progress we experience today. But black history isn’t just about telling stories of our past. History is being made every day and has been made throughout our lives; it’s not just in…
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Watch: Stars of The Book of Negroes on Importance of History
A little-reported episode of history is the subject of a new miniseries this week on BET. The Book of Negroes, based on Lawrence Hill’s 2007 novel, tells the story of 3,000 slaves who worked for the British during the American Revolution in exchange for freedom in Canada. Unlike previous films about slavery, the protagonist of The…
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Moral Mondays’ Barber Says America’s Political System Suffers From a ‘Heart Problem’
Raleigh, N.C., Saturday, Feb. 14: An African-American Muslim imam, Oliver Muhammad, offered the call to prayer; members of black Greek-letter fraternities served as event marshals; and as marchers in North Carolina’s Moral Monday movement began their walk across downtown Raleigh, the state’s capital, Chapel Hill Town Council member Maria Teresa Palmer announced—in Spanish—that “interpreters will…
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Cookie Monster: How Cookie Lyon Became the Most Compelling Character on TV
For all of Empire’s critics—and admittedly, I’ve been among them—there has been one aspect of the show that fans, skeptics and those residing somewhere in between have all agreed on: Cookie, played by Taraji P. Henson, is the best thing about the show. Cookie is the ex-wife of Lucious Lyon—a drug dealer-turned-rapper-turned-Jay Z-like figure with…
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For South Africa’s Postapartheid Generation, Discontent Grows
Thakeng Moreki lives in Orange Farm, a sprawling, impoverished shantytown 40 miles south of Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa—his community a place bypassed by the economic gains that the end of apartheid was supposed to bring to the nation’s poor. Unemployment exceeds 40 percent in Orange Farm, South Africa’s most populous shantytown, with…
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Valentine’s Day: Decades of Enduring Love
It seems like celebrities are always making up and breaking up. It may be hard to find long-lasting love in the limelight, but these adorable couples prove that partnerships can endure. Here are 14 celebrity duos who have been making our hearts melt for decades. 1. LL Cool J and Simone Smith LL Cool J and…