culture
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Racially Profiled While Shopping? Here’s 1 Way to Handle It
Another day, another story about racial profiling—inspiring outrage from some, resignation from others and disbelief from those still hanging on to the hope that such behavior is a rarity in America. As first reported by the Michigan Citizen, Portia Roberson—the attorney in charge of Detroit’s Civil Rights and Justice Department—was approached by police officers as…
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Oops: Aaron Hernandez Is ‘Mr. July’ in University of Florida Sports Calendar
Aaron Hernandez is currently indicted for three murders. The former New England Patriots star is also the 2014 University of Florida sports calendar’s “Mr. July,” the Associated Press reports. According to the news site, school officials on Tuesday said the calendar was approved last spring before Hernandez’s shocking June 2013 arrest in the murder of Odin…
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NY Mom Kills Self and Daughters in Nitrogen Gas Murder-Suicide
A New York mother took her own life and those of her two young daughters on Tuesday, shortly after a stint at a mental institution, the Associated Press reports. Angela Mtambu, 47, was said to have been devastated by the suicide of her 23-year-old son, who died of asphyxiation in the same home in East…
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NYPD Cracks Down on Subway Pole Dancers
New York City subway acrobats—watch out, you’re next. The impromptu, in-your-face pole dancers who flip, somersault and breakdance within inches of passengers’ faces on the nation’s busiest transit system have accounted for 240 misdemeanor arrests related to their acrobatics this year by the New York City Police Department, compared with less than 40 such arrests…
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Man Who Threatened to Kill Michael Strahan Arrested Outside GMA Studio
Police arrested a man with a knife outside ABC studios Tuesday morning after he claimed he was there to “kill Michael Strahan,” the New York Post reports. According to sources who spoke with the Post, Andre Johnson, 25, was outside the Good Morning America studio around 8 a.m. when he flashed the knife in front…
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Fast-Food Worker Claims She Was Forced to Clean Bathrooms With Toothbrush
Whitney Clark didn’t think her job as a cook at a Houston fast-food restaurant would mean she would have to endure taunts about her weight or demeaning physical labor. “I just [didn’t] let it get to me because you hear it over and over and over,” she told KHOU 11 News about the daily fat…
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Why We Need More Black Female Rappers
I swear, this is not another “I miss Lauryn Hill” article, even though, yes, I do miss her output. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (and, to a lesser degree, the Unplugged double album) changed my life for the better. But as often as Hill is cited for being the greatest female rapper of all time…
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Help! My White Husband Came With a Racist Teenage Stepdaughter
I married a wonderful man two years ago. We each have three children from prior marriages. I am a black woman and he is white. My 17-year-old stepdaughter recently thought it would be amusing to post racial slurs (the n-word) on social media. She refused to take responsibility for this, saying that she shouldn’t have…
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Hobby Lobby Ruling Denies Black Women Reproductive Justice
Throughout our history, black women across the country have felt the enduring sting of men controlling their reproductive freedom, infringing on their right to have or not have a child and access to birth control, and using religion as a basis for that control. A long history of denial of the right of black women…
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Michelle Howard Becomes 1st Female 4-Star Officer in the Navy
Adm. Michelle Janine Howard became the first female four-star officer in the history of the U.S. Navy, according to a press release. Howard, who was promoted at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, is expected to relieve Adm. Mark Ferguson II as the 38th vice chief of naval…