culture
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Africans Are Helping Themselves—Fuel Their Innovation, Not Your Own
It has been a recurring experience during my trips to Ghana and Nigeria in the past few years: seeing Africans do far more for themselves than the mainstream narrative about Africa would have you believe. More important, the methods used by local merchants—and even laymen who have to be ready at a moment’s notice to…
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Virginia KKK Leader: ‘We Don’t Hate People Because of Their Race’
The head of a Virginia Ku Klux Klan group says the organization has been unfairly depicted as racist, arguing that it is simply a nonviolent, Christian organization. Frank Ancona, imperial wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, made the comment during an interview Thursday with NBC 12 in response to complaints…
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Teen Whose Dad Died Shielding Her: ‘I Am Going to Make Him Proud’
“I am going to make him proud,” Masharah Tingling told the Chicago Tribune after her father, Michael Tingling, died Wednesday protecting her from an ex-convict during a sidewalk confrontation on the city’s North Side. Her father was looking forward to the eighth-grader’s graduation this spring from Chicago Math and Science Academy, said a friend, Carmen Preister. Preister…
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University of Alabama Student Leaders Block Greek Integration Bill
Six months after the campus newspaper reported on apparent racial discrimination in the University of Alabama pledging system, the student government on Thursday failed to pass a bill to support full integration of the school’s system of Greek fraternities and sororities, according to AL.com. The Senate of the Student Government Association (SGA) sent the measure…
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Don Lemon Won’t Rule Out the Supernatural in Malaysia Airliner Mystery
While governments, inspectors and even President Obama are ramping up efforts to find out exactly what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, CNN host Don Lemon isn’t ready to take supernatural and biblical theories off the table. On Sunday, Lemon said: “Especially today, on a day when we deal with the supernatural, we go to…
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Why Are Black People Nearly 4 Times as Likely to Be Arrested for Weed?
Millions of people each year are arrested for marijuana possession, but a black person is 3.73 times as likely as a white person to be arrested for the same offense. That, says the American Civil Liberties Union, is a form of racial injustice. So, this week, the organization launched The Uncovery, an advocacy tool that lets…
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Judge Upholds Firing of Police Officer Who Shared Rihanna Injury Photos
A judge has upheld the firing of a police officer who distributed an evidence photo showing injuries singer Rihanna sustained after she was attacked by then boyfriend Chris Brown. The photo found its way onto the celebrity website TMZ, the Associated Press reports. Former Los Angeles police officer Rebecca Reyes took a picture of an…
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It’s Official: Aaron McGruder Out at Boondocks
Aaron McGruder, creator and executive producer of The Boondocks, has had no involvement with the upcoming fourth season of the cartoon, Adult Swim confirms, fueling suspicions that began on Facebook, where McGruder claimed The Boondocks page had been “hijacked.” According to a press release issued by Adult Swim, “this season was produced without the involvement of…
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Officials Investigating Reported Confession in Kendrick Johnson Case
A communications company has been ordered to release Internet records after an anonymous email was sent to investigators declaring that an ex-schoolmate had confessed to killing Georgia teen Kendrick Johnson, CNN reports. According to the news network—which managed to obtain the e-mail and the subpoena—the email was from Jan. 27, with the sender claiming that…
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15 Famous 1st Black Tweets: Thanks, Twitter!
To celebrate the microblogging site’s own eighth birthday, this week the folks at Twitter unveiled their new #FirstTweet finder page—an easy way to see what your tweeps said when they first jumped into the Twitter fray. It’s also an easy way to see if your favorite notables had any Twitter game when they first joined.…