culture
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NYC Cop Involved in Fatal Shooting of Black Teen Named Cop of the Year
Updated Monday, May 12, 1:10 p.m. EDT: Community pressure may have forced Sgt. Mourad Mourad to decline the Cop of the Year award after several news outlets reported on public outrage over the choice of recipient: a nine-year veteran of the police force who was involved in the controversial fatal shooting of 16-year-old Kimani Gray, according…
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Why I Can’t Get Behind #BringBackOurGirls
I am not against online activism. In fact, I believe in it and have been moved by its power. From typhoon relief fundraisers to voter-recruitment efforts, I have participated in these Internet-based campaigns and have seen the power that lies in we Americans when we are aligned to create change from behind our computers. It…
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Beyond Biracial: When Blackness Is a Small, Nearly Invisible Fraction
Stephanie Troutman, a 36-year-old professor at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., has a white mother and a black father. She has her own family’s racial elevator speech down to a single sentence: “I’m a mixed woman who has a child with a black man and a child with a white man.” Her 7-year-old son,…
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Michael Sam: What He Means to Young Gay Black Men
For every gay black boy on a playground, basketball court or football field across the country who is derided by his peers as a “f—got” or “sissy”—excluded from games and told he has no place on the team—Michael Sam is a living example that not only can they play, but they can win. “Can Michael…
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Cyber-Stalker Forces St. Louis News-Anchor Off the Air
An award-winning former news-anchor says that she quit her job of 10 years after receiving threatening emails from a cyber-stalker, according to her site, TheVillageCelebration. To the dismay of scores of viewers, Vickie Newton quit her job at KMOV in St. Louis, Missouri, in July to return home to Arkansas to live with her family…
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Doors Shuttered at Nation’s Oldest Black Bookstore
Over nearly four decades, San Francisco’s Marcus Books served as a cultural Mecca for black writers, authors and just plain bibliophiles. The nation’s oldest black book store played host to scores of writers and speakers’ events, including James Baldwin, Dave Chappelle, Malcolm X, Alice Walker, Willie Brown, Jackie Robinson, Angela Davis, Barry White, Wesley Snipes…
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Search Continues for DC Child Relisha Rudd
A volunteer task force comprising parents and other concerned citizens met Friday at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens in Washington, D.C., with one goal: find 8-year-old Relisha Rudd, who was last seen more than two months ago, NBC 4 Washington reports. None of the searchers ever met Relisha, but volunteers told the station they will…
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They’re Moms to Black America
Every May we take a Sunday to honor our individual moms. But what about the women who, whether or not they have children of their own, offer the spirit of motherhood to all of us? They use their platforms to deliver a steady stream of love (sometimes tough), guidance and care. They’re nurturers, providers and…
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A Mother’s Love: Stories of Struggle, Sacrifice, Love and Wisdom
It’s Mother’s Day weekend, and many of us may feel the keen absence of the women who meant the most to us. How many times have you wished you could turn back the hands of time and have one more conversation with one of the most influential women of your life? Maybe have notes of…
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Dutchman: Black Men and White Women, Controversial Onstage—and, Still, in Real Life?
When Amiri Baraka’s best-known play, Dutchman, opened in 1964, it was critically acclaimed and quite controversial. At the height of the civil rights movement, while black Americans were struggling for the right to vote and attend the same schools as white Americans, here was a play depicting a sexually aggressive white woman attempting to seduce…