culture
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‘Spoiled’ Teen Denied $650 a Week in Child Support
A New Jersey teen who took her parents to court seeking child support after being tossed out of their Lincoln Park home has been shut down after a judge ruled against her, saying the high school cheerleader was “spoiled,” the New York Daily News reports. On Tuesday, Morristown Superior Court Judge Peter Bogaard ruled against…
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Former World Champion Boxer Arrested in Florida
Former world champion boxer Antonio Tarver was arrested in Florida earlier this week on a felony theft and bad check warrant stemming from unpaid IOUs at a Las Vegas Strip casino, the Associated Press reports. The Florida Highway Patrol arrested Tarver after a traffic stop led to the discovery of a warrant, which had been…
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Missing Florida Mom Found in Sunken Car Near Universal Studios
The body of a missing Florida mother was discovered on Monday in a sunken car in a pond near Universal Studios Orlando, the New York Daily News reports. Carline Brumaire Jean’s Toyota Camry was pulled from the pond next to the Royal Pacific Hotel, where she worked as a housekeeper, the site notes. Her death…
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Black College Students Launch Artistic Social Media Campaigns About Race
The 1990s babies matriculating at top-tier universities are in the midst of active protest. They have been for a while now. Back in November, several black students at the University of Michigan launched a social media campaign on Twitter, using the hashtag #BBUM, an acronym for “being black at the University of Michigan,” to describe…
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Lupita’s Spotlight: A Reality Check for Light-Skinned Women?
The scene Sunday night: an Oscar-watching party. The topic: of course, beautiful Lupita’s fairy-tale moment. So my friends and I naturally start tweeting and talking about what it all means. I make what I think is a fairly innocuous point. I told one of my friends that finally—all these years after Dark Girls and Good Hair…
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Why Black South African Women Are Protesting at the Oscar Pistorius Trial
As Oscar Pistorius faces trial for murder, a large group of South African women have become like a shadow that the runner seems unable to shake. In this notoriously violent country, a vocal group of women, most of them black, say they believe Pistorius’ girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp was a victim of an all-too-common crime, one…
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Kenyan Pastor Says No To Panties
A pastor in Kenya has reportedly banned women from wearing underwear to church in order to receive Christ “free in body and spirit”. Ok, sir. While the rest of us must have missed that order in Sunday School, Reverend Njohi of the Lord’s Propeller Redemption Church in Nairobi, is adamant that his parishioners follow the new rules.…
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Will 12 Years a Slave Change Hollywood’s Race Problem?
Admirers of 12 Years a Slave are still basking in the Academy Awards’ afterglow. The fact that a film by a black screenwriter and black director—depicting a black man’s painful but ultimately triumphant true life story—won several Oscars, including the top prize for best picture, is a dream come true, particularly for moviegoers of color.…
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Tenn. News Anchor Removes Wig on Air After Bout With Breast Cancer
A brave Tennessee news anchor who has been fighting cancer declared, after running a preproduced segment about women and their “crowns of glory”—in which she discusses how recent chemotherapy treatments caused her to go bald—that she’d had enough. “I’m going natural. No more relaxers to straighten my hair,” she told viewers. When the cameras cut…
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Lupita Nyong’o and What It Means to Be Black
When I posted a picture on my Instagram of newly minted Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o giving her acceptance speech at Sunday night’s awards ceremony, I didn’t know or even suspect that there was any question about whether she was black. The photo was of a beaming Nyong’o holding up her award in triumph. Her…