culture

“Young African Americans need two more levels of education than their young white counterparts to have the same chance at employment” is the stark conclusion of a new study from Young Invincibles, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that focuses on young Americans. The study, “Closing the Race Gap” (pdf), confirms the timeless adage that as a black…

A missing 12-year-old Detroit boy who was the subject of a massive citywide search was found Wednesday in the basement of his family’s home. Detroit Police Chief James Craig told the Associated Press that Charlie Bothuell V, who had been missing for some 11 days, was found behind boxes and a large plastic drum in…

A total of $150 or two months of past-due water bills is all it takes for the already bankrupt city of Detroit to shut off someone’s water. With work scarce and money even harder to find, some 150,000 residents have been threatened with shutoffs by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, and local activists told…

This week Prince recorded a rap song featuring British artist Rita Ora (yes, the Rita Ora who dated Rob Kardashian). He also released a song titled “This Could Be Us” from his upcoming solo album, which will be released on Warner Bros. Records. The title is inspired by viral memes that depict two people in…

Some MCs give us fun turns of phrases, others rap words that we live by to this day. We use lyrics to get pumped up, to remind ourselves everything is going to be OK or simply to write captions on Instagram. Lyrics, some would say, are not always what makes a song great. Some rappers…

New York City’s recently announced $40 million settlement with the five exonerated defendants in the infamous Central Park Five jogger-rape case appears to close the chapter on a painful historical episode.  But in reality, both the injustice it represents, and the way race and class determine how the accused are treated, are very much open concerns.…

For many years, one of the few African Americans publishing in fantasy and science fiction, and the first genre writer to be awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant, was Octavia E. Butler, a widely popular and highly acclaimed writer who died unexpectedly in 2006. This week, two of her unpublished stories are available in e-book form…

Black power is big in Brazil. In the United States, black power is most associated with raised fists, social revolution and political demands. When Americans think “black power,” they generally think about the movement named and popularized in the 1960s by Southern Christian Leadership Conference founder and Black Panther Stokely Carmichael. The concept of black…