culture
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Venus and Serena Williams Upset in the French Open
On Wednesday Venus and Serena Williams were bounced from the French Open, losing to lesser-known opponents in the second round, the Associated Press reports. In what many are calling a stunning upset, Serena, the defending French Open champion, lost to Garbine Muguruza of Spain in straight sets, 6-2, 6-2. This marks the second time that…
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Ga. Dad Charged With Child Cruelty for Making Son Carry 23-Pound Stone
A Douglasville, Ga., father has been charged with first-degree child cruelty after forcing his teen son to carry a 23-pound landscape stone on a 3-mile hike, 11 Alive reports. The 40-year-old veteran, identified as Charlie Mayes, had no criminal record and openly admitted to the police that he was using the military-style punishment because his…
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Groups Want NFL Players to Join Battle Over Washington Redskins Team Name
Several groups who find the Washington Redskins name to be offensive are asking NFL players to join the cause. The Oneida Indian Nation and the National Congress of American Indians, two groups who have been vocal about changing the team’s name, started the letter-writing frenzy that just last week had some 50 Senate Democrats penning…
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Black Republican Claims Cliven Bundy Not ‘Racist at All’
Niger Innis, the national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality doesn’t believe that Cliven Bundy—yes, the Cliven Bundy who was taped saying, “Blacks were better off as slaves”—is racist and said as much at an event this past weekend, Mediaite.com reports. Innis, who’s running for Nevada’s 4th Congressional District—which the website reports is also…
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Report: Shelly Sterling Close to Selling LA Clippers
The NBA’s wish to have the Los Angeles Clippers owned by anyone not named Sterling is getting closer to becoming reality as reports have Shelly Sterling close to signing a deal presumably as early as this week, the New York Daily News reports. Shelly Sterling is now facilitating the deal after her “estranged” husband, disgraced…
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Comparing Black People to Apes: It’s Worse Than You Thought
Last night we had a couple over as dinner guests. The wife is an old friend of my wife’s, from Chicago. I never liked her. She moved to Australia and got married, and she and her husband were here visiting. At one point, discussing the aboriginal people of Australia, she said, “They have a very simian—a…
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Cicely Tyson: 6 Career-Defining Roles
Long before Kerry Washington started handling her business in her Emmy-nominated role as Olivia Pope, actress Cicely Tyson was doing her thing and helping to open doors for actresses like Washington. Forty years ago, Tyson became the first black woman to win an Emmy in a leading role for her performance in the miniseries The…
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‘Case for Reparations’ Explains How America Must Come to Terms With Its History
Social media is buzzing over Ta-Nehisi Coates’ remarkable essay, “The Case for Reparations,” recently published in The Atlantic, and his appearance on legendary journalist Bill Moyers’ Moyers & Company, in which Coates distills the ways in which American history has distorted our understanding of contemporary race relations. White supremacy, he reminds us, is as integral…
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New Study Shows We’re Not Post-Racial When It Comes to Hiring Decisions
A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research reinforces a reality that many of us have long understood and that is well-documented: African-American unemployment has been nearly double that of white Americans throughout much of the last five years. What has not been as widely covered is that racial disparities in unemployment…
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Watch: Cops Blast KRS-One’s ‘Sound of Da Police’
Looks like a few British police officers have a love for old-school hip-hop: Two officers in Chelmsford, Essex, were busted for blasting KRS-One’s “Sound of Da Police” out of their patrol car after footage was uploaded to social networking sites. According to New York’s Daily News, the officers were disciplined after video was uploaded to YouTube…