culture
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How Boyce Watkins Became the Negro Whisperer, Explained
Sure! Earlier this week, a video of a screenshot of what seems to be an online conference call began circumnavigating the inboxes of the woke black internet. The video shows two men having a conversation about Boyce Watkins, Ph.D., and his … Watkins is the less charismatic Umar Johnson of black financial independence and wealth.…
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Black Panther Delivers the Biggest, Blackest Superhero Movie Ever and It’s Just as Good as You Want It to Be
When I sat in the theater and screened Black Panther, I felt like the woman in the audience at the Five Heartbeats’ show who couldn’t stop squirming out of her seat. And then I Googled “Wakanda ticket prices,” as if the country were real. The short review is: Black Panther is a thing of cinematic…
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Dear, Teacher: How Does It Feel to Be an Oppressor?
The New York Daily News reported Feb. 1—the start of Black History Month—that a teacher in a majority-minority school in the Bronx, N.Y., instructed three black children in her seventh-grade class to lie on the floor during a lesson on slavery. Then she stepped on the students’ backs, allegedly to show them “how it feels…
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‘Long Live the King’ Black Panther Commercial Wins the Super Bowl
King T’Challa, also known as the Black Panther, came all up through the TV screen during Super Bowl LII, and hands down, the ad won. The commercial uses the set from the film, in which we hear actor Chadwick Boseman’s lilting voice as T’Challa, reveling in all his coolness in the spot featuring the all-new…
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When Therapy Is a Comfort
“So, what do you want to talk about today?” the thin Asian woman across from me asks. She asks this twice a week because I see her twice a week. Twice a week, I sit on a gray sofa with red accent pillows and talk for 50 minutes. She listens, often interjects and asks questions.…
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Sex Trafficking and the Super Bowl: There’s More at Play Sunday Than Just Football
On Sunday, when the Philadelphia Eagles and the New England Patriots meet for the Super Bowl, the spotlight in Minneapolis will be on more than the gridiron clash at U.S. Bank Stadium. Minnesota is the 13th top child trafficking and sex trafficking state in the country, and this poses a problem with the presence of…
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Ambitious, Thought-Provoking and Utterly Bizarre, Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You Was the Most Mind-Blowing Movie at Sundance
Before he received a rousing ovation at the Sundance Film Festival for his bizarrely brilliant social-critique film debut, Sorry to Bother You, Boots Riley was ruffling the feathers of corporate America as the frontman of political hip-hop group the Coup. The Oakland, Calif., collective is infamous for their 2001 album, Party Music, and its prophetic cover art,…
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Toni Braxton Has Blocked Me on Twitter and I Have Questions
In September I was alerted to a new Toni Braxton single, entitled “Deadwood,” by a friend who has long known my affinity for all things Toni Braxton. I heard the song and, unsurprisingly, loved it. So being the longtime fan that I am, I promptly went to Twitter in order to spread the gospel. That’s…
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Kelvin Harrison Jr.’s Breakout Performance Anchors Powerful Young-Adult Novel-Turned-Sundance Film Monster
It’s maddening that a book written in 1999 still carries so much relevance in 2018. Nearly two decades ago, Walter Dean Myers’ young-adult novel approached a racist court system that paints African-American men as guilty “monsters” before any evidence is presented. Sadly, this concept holds true as former music video director-turned-first-time filmmaker Anthony Mandler (Beyoncé…