culture

Tracey Edmonds never wanted to be on TV. She never dreamed of having cameras beside her face, reflecting wide and tight angles, flashing perfect teeth across the screen. A whiz-kid brainiac since birth, she attended Stanford University at 16 majoring in psycho-biology. Upon graduating at 20, Edmonds opened her own real estate and mortgage firm. But her…

I had my annual physical examination a few days ago, and upon checking my vitals—my blood pressure score, as I’m telling everybody, was 118/72—my doctor, a 60-something white woman, jokingly remarked, “Love it when my peeps are doing well.” And though in many other settings her attempt at colloquial bonding might have been met with…

While I applaud Lean In’s recent launch of their Ban Bossy campaign—some like it, some don’t—I encourage them to do more. It’s not, of course, that there’s a problem with the word “bossy”; it’s that societally, we hold different expectations about bossiness for girls and women. And just as we need to work to change how…

Lando Calrissian didn’t need to be there. Neither did R2-D2 or the Ewoks, for that matter. Billy Dee Williams could have made his debut on Dancing With the Stars and done that “dance” holding an open Colt 45 and not spilled a drop with that two-step shuffle thrust, and it would have been fine. But…

A black firefighters group, the Vulcan Society of Black Firefighters, sued New York City, alleging discrimination in the Fire Department of New York, and Tuesday were told that minority fire department applicants will be eligible to receive back pay totaling $98 million, the Associated Press reports. AP notes that the settlement includes more than $6…

A suspected drunk driver who was fleeing police at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, is now responsible for three deaths, after the third victim died from injuries she sustained after being run over, the Associated Press reports. According to AP, Rashad Owens, 21, was fleeing police when he crashed through a barricade…

Looks like Chris Brown won’t be getting out of jail anytime soon. According to the Associated Press, the judge is keeping Brown in jail for at least a month after hearing that he had made troubling comments in rehab about being good at using guns and knives. The 24-year-old singer was arrested on Friday after…

Major changes are coming to the SAT. Both the SAT and the ACT are used to influence admissions and placement at colleges and universities in the U.S. In 2016 the SAT will return to a 1,600-point scale from 2,400, eliminate antiquated vocabulary words and assess students’ understanding of context rather than rote memorization. The essay…