culture

Eric Garner was standing on a sidewalk Thursday when police, who accused him of selling untaxed cigarettes, approached him. Garner, 43, told police that he hadn’t sold anything and to leave him alone. After a brief standoff, five police officers attempted to take the 400-pound Staten Island, N.Y., father of six down to the ground.…

Imagine that you’ve nearly completed the requirements of your four-year—that’s eight terms—apprenticeship program, and with two weeks to go before graduation and promotion to journeyman status, you’re expelled. This happened to a black apprentice attending a school affiliated with the Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee of Sheet Metal Workers Local 25, which represents sheet metal…

Danae Mines, one of 41 women in the New York City Fire Department, just made history as the first to grace the pages of the FDNY Calendar of Heroes that famously features bare-chested firemen, reports the New York Daily News. The 11-year veteran of Engine Co. 60 in the South Bronx, N.Y., is Miss March. Mines,…

Treme actor Rob Brown, who was handcuffed and accused of using a fake credit card while trying to purchase a watch for his mother at Macy’s flagship store in New York City’s Herald Square, has settled his lawsuit against the department store. According to the New York Daily News, Brown has reached an agreement in…

My boyfriend’s ex is still close with his mother. She even calls her “Mom.” They have been broken up for over a year, and he says they no longer communicate. Am I wrong for wanting this relationship to stop? It is awkward at family functions when both of us are around. —Anonymous  You are not…

I love weddings. And one of the best weddings I’ve ever attended took place last week in Brooklyn, N.Y. The whole evening was a perfect blend of elegance and casualness. Rose petals were strewn about a wooden deck, and a Juilliard-trained musician bowed her violin as 100 well-dressed guests sat underneath the setting sun, sipping…

“I think Olivia Pope is the bomb. And if that’s the way we’re going to get it, then we need to get it.” “It,” according to Alexis De Veaux, is black feminism. The retired professor of women’s studies at the State University of New York, Buffalo, says she does not question the legitimacy of popular…

Sara Gibbs was a single woman, working long hours as a nurse, when she made a decision that would change her life. Gibbs never thought she would be a mother, but after an infant girl was left on the doorstep of a nearby doctor’s office, she made the decision to take the child in. She’s…

The cradle-to-prison pipeline and the sharp decline in employment opportunities during the Great Recession remain very real for black men. University of Chicago economic researchers Derek Neal and Armin Rick looked at census data to measure the status of black men and presented preliminary findings from their working paper at the National Bureau of Economic…