culture
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Viola Davis’ Debut in How to Get Away With Murder Stuns in Satisfying ShondaLand Fashion
Swathed in a sexy, brick red, butter-leather jacket and dangling earrings, with a dash of cleave and coiffed in a short haircut borrowed from the files and styles of RiRi—clearly appropriate for after-5 shenanigans—Viola Davis is worlds away from the more modest stylings of such roles as Aibileen in The Help and even the early parts of her portrayal…
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Fla. Mom Put Baby in Trunk to Avoid a Ticket for Not Having a Car Seat
It was all a mistake. That’s what 19-year-old Breona Watkins said in a court appearance on Wednesday after she was arrested when authorities found her baby in the trunk of her car during a traffic stop, CBS News reports. According to the report, the discovery started out as a routine traffic stop over a broken…
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Watch: SC Highway Patrol Trooper Shoots Man Going for His License
Editor’s note: This story includes video footage that some may find disturbing. Video has been released of a South Carolina Highway Patrol trooper approaching a man regarding a traffic violation and then shooting him, seemingly for no reason, The State reports. Officer Sean Groubert has been arrested and charged with assault and battery of a…
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Homeless Great-Grandmother Beaten by Calif. Cop Reaches Settlement
The July 1 video of a police officer sitting atop a black woman and raining down punches on her went viral. The story would soon emerge that the woman, Marlene Pinnock, a 51-year-old great-grandmother, was homeless and headed to an underpass to sleep when a California Highway Patrol officer stopped her, threw her to the…
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Alaska Reporter Who Quit on Air Allegedly Harassed Neighbors With Her Marijuana Habits
Charlo Greene, the Alaska reporter who stunned viewers when she abruptly quit her job on air to devote her time to marijuana advocacy, is probably not going to win any employee-of-the-month awards, and she apparently isn’t neighbor of the year, either. According to the New York Daily News, an Alaska father filed a restraining order against…
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Here’s Some History Behind That ‘Angry Black Woman’ Riff the NY Times Tossed Around
If you’re a devoted Scandal watcher, by now you’ve read, or at least heard, about the New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley and her painfully off-key review of Shonda Rhimes’ television oeuvre, which, mercifully, has been roundly blasted by The Root’s Diana Ozemebhoya Eromosele, Vulture’s Margaret Lyons and many, many others. Even as Stanley and the Times…
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Scandal Returns: 10 Things to Remember Before the Season Premiere
Scandal-heads, we’ve gone through five months of withdrawal, and with Thursday night’s season 4 premiere, we’re finally going to get our fix! We’ve got our wine and popcorn ready, but first, let’s take a quick look back at where our favorite characters landed at the end of season 3. 1. Olivia and Jake fly off…
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Prime-Time TV Inches Closer to Living Color
The title alone was enough to set some people on edge. But the producers of ABC’s Black-ish have spent a lot of time assuring potential viewers that the show isn’t just a collection of jokes about an upper-middle-class family. Instead, the sitcom about a black, upper-middle-class dad (Anthony Anderson) who fears that his kids…
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Surveillance Video Released of Wal-Mart Toy-Gun Police Shooting
Surveillance video of John Crawford III’s last moments inside a Beavercreek, Ohio, Wal-Mart has been released. Crawford can be seen walking into the store, picking up the air rifle and then walking the aisle holding the gun. He never holds the air rifle in a shooting stance, but he can be seen with the gun…
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100 Years Later, a New Black Film Emerges
Recently discovered reels from a 1913 film have become the oldest-known footage of a movie featuring a black cast, reports the New York Times. Found in the film archives at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the untitled silent film depicts middle-class black life in the early-Jim Crow era. The footage found…