culture

A witness, who spoke to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on the condition of anonymity, says he was working on a building in the neighborhood when he saw Ferguson, Mo., police Officer Darren Wilson chasing Michael Brown and shooting him while the teen’s hands were up. So far the key witness to the shooting has been…

An officer with the Baton Rouge Police Department in Louisiana resigned under fire this week after a string of bigoted text messages he wrote about blacks were released to authorities, WBRZ-TV reports. “They are nothing but a bunch of monkeys,” one text read, according to the report. “The only reason they have this job is…

While unemployment rates have fallen for nearly every group of Americans after the most recent recession, there appears to be no reprieve for black women. An estimated 10.6 percent of black women age 20 or older are unemployed, a figure unchanged from a year ago, International Business Times reports, citing Friday’s jobs report from the…

Mayor Vincent Gray’s administration did its best to offer suitable services to missing 8-year-old Relisha Rudd and her family, according to a report (pdf) released this week by two deputy mayors of Washington, D.C. But lapses in communication among several key agencies, including schools and social services, may have led to mistakes in Relisha’s case, with…

“There is a difference this time; this time there’s a video,” the Rev. Al Sharpton told the crowd at Eric Garner’s funeral in July. “Go to the tape. The tape tells what you did and what you didn’t do.” He was referring to the footage of the last living moments of the unarmed black New York…

MTV seems to have learned a thing or two from VH1 and rapper T.I. about having a hip-hop superstar-turned-family man spearhead a reality show. According to Variety, MTV has signed off on a half-hour reality show that will chronicle Ja Rule’s home life with his wife, mother-in-law and three kids. The press statement that Ja…

Some 8,000 former patients of a gynecologist who secretly recorded their exams aren’t happy with the slicing up of the $190 million settlement that was reached with Johns Hopkins Hospital. According to the Associated Press, lawyers could receive up to 35 percent, or some $66 million, of the negotiated deal. Twenty-five former patients not only…