culture
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If Mark Ruffalo’s ‘God Is a Black Woman’ Tweet Were a Marvel Movie
In “America must be in sweeps season” news, Doug Jones won the Alabama Senate seat in a special election over a homophobic alleged pedophile. Woop-woop, decency for the win! It was readily apparent that, similar to what happened in the election that brought the circus peanut in chief to the presidential seat, black women did…
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Black Women and Sexuality: Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don’t
On Thursday night, I was looking at the Facebook post that linked to my column on raunchy twerk anthems. As I do on our main site, I like to engage with the readers in the comments. As I read through what people were saying, I noticed a disturbing pattern: A great number of men were…
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Mind Your Plate, Not My Stomach: Surviving the Holidays With Judgmental Loved Ones
Some of us are looking forward to burying our faces in Christmas dinner with friends and family in a brief 10 days. Hopefully, your dinner will be blessed with someone who has gifted culinary hands when it comes to baked macaroni and cheese—and I’m not talking about the disrespectful and disgusting remakes making the rounds…
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In Star Wars: The Last Jedi, John Boyega, People of Color Get to Shine in a Galaxy Far, Far Away
“You can judge a nation, and how successful it will be, by how it treats its women and its girls.” —President Barack Obama, Jan. 23, 2014 There goes Obama again tapping into one of life’s basic principles. You can always tell how good or successful something is going to be by how it treats the…
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Little Black Girls Are Killing Themselves. Does Anyone Care Enough to Figure Out Why?
When I was 4 years old, I told my mother that my nursery school teacher told me to “stop acting like a baby” because I had gotten a boo-boo on my knee. According to my mother, she asked me what reception other little kids received when they got boo-boos. I told her that a little…
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She’s So Basic: 6 Common Mediocre-White-Girl Tropes Found in TV and Movies
Pearl-clutching liberals respond to instances of bigotry and bad behavior with “It’s 2017, ffs!” Well, I’ve consulted the zodiac, and 2017 has been the year of the mediocre white man. Blake Shelton is the sexiest man alive, and Donald Trump the most powerful. White male mediocrity is simply the opposite of surprising. White women are…
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Tracing Your Roots: Were My Enslaved Ancestors East African?
Separating fact from fiction in a family’s oral tradition. Dear Professor Gates: I recently read a 2014 article that you authored (“Were My Enslaved Ancestors Originally From Ethiopia?”) concerning a Green family in Texas with roots in Georgia and their possible connection to Ethiopia. I’m inquiring about my own Green family, also from Georgia (primarily…
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Nah, White Women … You Can’t Have This One
In the aftermath of black people showing up out of nowhere—like little Kenard who snuffed out Omar on The Wire—to kill Roy Moore and the “alt-right’s” dream of making the documentary Mr. Molester Goes to Washington, everyone wants a little bit of credit. The Democratic Party is saying, “I told y’all.” The pundits are giving…