culture
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Black Panther: An Allegory of the World Wanting Blackness but Not Black People
When it was announced that T’Challa—THE Black Panther—would become an official part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, social media lit up with excitement. People who were familiar with the comics were buzzing about which iteration would be translated to the big screen and how he would fit in with other characters, such as Captain America…
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Tracing Your Roots: Who Were My Kin Born During Slavery?
Differing surnames and living arrangements complicate the search for the parents of an ancestor born during Reconstruction in North Carolina. Dear Professor Gates: I am curious to know who the parents were of my paternal great-grandfather Turner Bond (1868-1925). He was a self-employed blacksmith in Windsor, Bertie County, N.C., who could read and write. He…
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Black History Can’t and Shouldn’t Be Relegated to a Single Month
Last year, Vice President Mike Pence commemorated the start of Black History Month by acknowledging Abraham Lincoln, a white man, for submitting the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. Pence’s snubbing of black people happened on the same day President Donald Trump talked as if Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, writer and civil rights leader, were still alive…
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From Living Single to Love Jones: How the ’90s Shaped My Style
Between Bruno Mars and our new president, Cardi B, taking us back to In Living Color with their video for “Finesse” and bingeing on Living Single after it made its way to Hulu last month, I’m in a ’90s mood. Listen, when Living Single debuted in August of ’93, I knew immediately that I wanted…
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Episode 2: The Tragic Deaths of Robert Walker and Echol Cole Sparked 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike
Robert Walker, 30, and Echol Cole, 36, woke up on Thursday, Feb. 1, 1968, and went to work for the Memphis (Tenn.) Sanitation Department. They left their families for a long day of collecting garbage with the full expectation of returning home to them. Instead, as their shifts were about to end and heavy rain…
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Is Today’s Hip-Hop Trash or Are We Just Getting Old? Spoiler Alert: The Answer Is ‘Yes’
I’ll start with a disclaimer: I’m an old hip-hop head. I am 30-*coughs and crumples paper while driving under a bridge* years old and I am set in my taste, similar to how white people describe their racist parents as being “set in their ways.” I know what I fuck wit. If you know me,…
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Low Graduation Rates Aren’t an HBCU Thing
A black woman with a teenage son told me that several people had sent her the recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution article about black colleges “struggling” with low graduation rates to warn her against sending her son to an HBCU. The article’s headline stated that the six-year graduation rates at “many” HBCUs are lower than 20 percent.…
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Could Kim Kardashian’s Cold, Overstuffed Hot Pockets Actually Be the Sunken Place?
On Monday, the human black-man succubus, also known as Kim Kardashian, continued her trek to colonize the entirety of black womanness, thus completing her transition to become the first-ever cloned Armenian sex doll with black mannerisms. She accomplished this latest maneuver by appropriating cornrows. To date, Kardashian and her merry band of familial pirates have…
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On Reinvention and Remission: Chef Elle Simone Scott Is Paving the Way for Women of Color in the Culinary Industry
Detroit native chef Elle Simone Scott is one of the scintillating on-air talents and food stylists on America’s Test Kitchen. Her rich roots and passion for culinary arts were inspired by cooking with her grandmother at a very young age; years later, she’d moonlight in the hospitality industry after earning credentials from Eastern Michigan University…
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Should Black Artists Care About the Grammys?
“Who gives a fuck about a goddamn Grammy?” These venerable words came from the mouth of Public Enemy’s Chuck D on 1988’s “Terminator X to the Edge of Panic.” It is a sentiment that’s been shared by so many other artists, critics and fans over the years. When it comes to the Recording Academy, black…