culture
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Battle for Black Voters’ Rights Rages on in North Carolina
Midterm elections are right around the corner, and for the North Carolina NAACP and the Advancement Project, this month represents a do-or-die moment in what will be the last time to put an end to the sweeping voter-suppression law enacted in June 2013 before voting starts this year. At an injunction hearing scheduled for Monday,…
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Reading Rainbow Kickstarter Leads to More Than $5,400,000 in Donations
The pot of gold at the end of Reading Rainbow is somewhere in the neighborhood of $5.4 million. At the end of May, executive producer and host LeVar Burton launched the Kickstarter campaign in hopes of creating a Web version of the popular PBS show. He saw its initial goal of $1 million reached just…
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‘What Would Jesus Do?’ Well … Tyler Perry Owns That
Tyler Perry just won the rights to use the popular phrase “What Would Jesus Do,” the Hollywood Reporter reports. The actor, director and screenwriter insisted that he wasn’t looking for exclusive ownership of or rights to the word “Jesus” beyond that ’90s quip, the entertainment site notes. The phrase was caught up in a trademark…
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Tracing Dad’s Ancestry Without His DNA
Editor’s note: This column was originally published May 3, 2013. A common problem that people encounter when trying to trace their roots on a particular parent’s side using DNA testing is that the parent is dead or not available to them. The reader below has encountered this roadblock, but there are ways around it. I…
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Hobby Lobby Ruling Opens the Door to ‘Method Discrimination’ for Black Women
Apologists for the Supreme Court’s controversial ruling this week in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores are fond of pointing out that the arts and crafts retail chain includes 16 forms of contraception under its health insurance plan and excludes only four. And by framing this as corporate benevolence, Hobby Lobby and the court have effectively opened…
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Opie & Anthony Host Calls Black Woman a ‘Savage’ During Racist Twitter Rant
Editor’s note: This article contains tweets that some may find offensive. Anthony Cumia, the “Anthony” half of the enormously unfunny shock-jock comedy team of Opie and Anthony—whose show by the same name airs on SiriusXM—was out late in New York taking photos, some of which included women dressed in club attire who did not give…
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Watch: Larenz Tate Says Hollywood Limits Black Experience to 1 Lane
Black thug. Welfare queen. Token black friend. Crazy black woman. Vigilante slave. We’re well-aware that these stereotypes have flooded big and small screens with shortsighted portrayals of the collective black experience. Actor Larenz Tate sat down with HuffPost Live host Marc Lamont Hill on Tuesday and discussed how stereotypical black roles are still overrepresented in…
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Young-Adult Author Walter Dean Myers Dies at 76
Renowned author of young-adult fiction Walter Dean Myers, who made a mark for himself by writing books about young African Americans, has passed way at 76, the Los Angeles Times reports. “Walter’s many award-winning books do not shy away from the sometimes gritty truth of growing up. … He wrote with heart and he spoke…
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Black Supremacist King Samir Shabazz Jailed Again on Charges of Illegal Gun Possession
Minister King Samir Shabazz, an outspoken black supremacist and New Black Panther Party Philadelphia-chapter leader, is sitting in a Mercer County, N.J., jail cell after police arrested him on gun charges—his second gun arrest in a year, reports Philly.com. Police arrested Shabazz, 42, who was born Maruse Heath, in Trenton, N.J., while serving an outstanding…
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NJ Cheerleader Shot ‘Execution Style’ 2 Weeks After Graduating
A Newark high school cheerleader was shot and killed two weeks after her graduation, and New Jersey police are searching for any witnesses, CBS New York reports. “They told her to get on her knees and they shot her in the head execution style,” Michael Bond, the uncle of 17-year-old Cheyanne Bond, told the news…