culture

Students at a Seattle high school could face disciplinary action after they reportedly hurled racial slurs at black basketball players on a rival team after a loss, MYNorthwest reports. The teams competed Friday for the fourth time this year at the WIAA State Basketball Tournament, but it was during the third matchup on Feb. 21…

Not again. A Maryland fraternity and sorority are under fire for reportedly hosting a Country Music Television vs. BET-themed party, where mostly white students dressed in hip-hop regalia and country-styled clothing. One white female student donned an Afro wig, butt padding and a clingy dress during the event, which the vice president of student affairs…

A federal jury on Friday convicted the daughter of President Obama’s former pastor of laundering thousands of dollars from a $1.25 million state grant for a Chicago-based job-training program, the Chicago Tribune reports. Jeri L. Wright, the 48-year-old daughter of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, told the Tribune Friday as she left a Springfield, Ill., courtroom…

This week marked three months since 30-year-old Michigan doctor Teleka Patrick vanished without a trace after work one day. Patrick, who was in the midst of a psychiatric residency at Borgess Hospital in Kalamazoo, Mich., was last seen on Dec. 5 as she tried to book a room downtown at a Radisson Plaza Hotel &…

Thirty-two-year-old Ebony Wilkerson’s three children were reportedly screaming for their lives when she drove a minivan into the ocean surf off of Florida, the Associated Press reports. The children, ages 3, 9 and 10, were rescued Tuesday by bystanders and officers as the minivan was almost submerged off a coast in Daytona Beach, Fla. Wilkerson,…

Empires are built by forward-thinking individuals who see things that other people do not. Foundations are stabilized by great logistical minds who convert grand ideas into practical steps. For six years, visionary film director-writer-PR expert Ava DuVernay has been just that kind of individual. Her African American Film Festival Releasing Movement [AFFRM] is a first…

Solomon Northup’s harrowing story, 12 Years a Slave, was deserving of the silver screen and the accolades that followed. But there are books by black authors, like Tananarive Due, Octavia Butler and Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, that tell other stories, beyond the whips and chains of slavery, that Hollywood should consider bringing to the big screen.…

Some New York high school students who couldn’t handle a tough semifinal basketball loss took to Twitter to send racially insensitive tweets at the opposing school, leading to the suspension of three students and possibly several more.   According to CBS New York, on Thursday, Mahopac High School lost 43-40 to top-seeded Mount Vernon, which is…