culture
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Football Team Forfeits Game After Player's Home Is Spray-Painted With Graffiti
A Massachusetts high school football team is forfeiting the remainder of its games after a player’s house was sprayed-painted with racist graffiti, the Huffington Post reports. Lunenburg High School has canceled its remaining two games after the house of Isaac Phillips, 13 (whose mother is white and father is black) was scrawled with the message:…
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Teen Playing ‘Knockout Game’ Gets Shot by Victim
A man standing on a corner in Michigan waiting for his 6-year-old daughter to be dropped off from school wasn’t too worried about the van he saw circle him twice. “I saw the van circle twice, and the second time three kids came out. I didn’t suspect anything. I hadn’t any enemies, or any reason…
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Scandal Creator Shonda Rhimes to Pen Memoir
As if owning prime time television weren’t enough, Shonda Rhimes is looking to take over the literary genre. That’s right, the genius behind Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal has signed on with publishing powerhouse Simon & Schuster to write a memoir in 2015, Variety reports. “Simon and Schuster is crazy for giving me a book deal as I am clearly in…
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Students Charged With Hate Crimes Against African-American Roommate
“Three-fifths” and “Fraction” are the names three white roommates at San Jose State University gave their black freshman roommate to remind him that there was a time when blacks were considered a fraction of a person. They also outfitted the room with a Confederate flag and wrote the n-word on a dry erase board. Then…
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Sasha Obama Causes Unicorn-Sweater Hysteria
When Sasha Obama went to the Comcast Center to watch her Uncle Craig’s Oregon State Beavers destroy the Maryland Terps last Sunday, I doubt she thought her black sweater with the unicorn on the front was making a fashion statement. Turns out, her sweater was the real winner that night—at least for ASOS. The online…
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Benjamin Crump: 'Zimmerman Belongs Behind Bars'
On Tuesday, an admitted killer walked free—again. And after a Florida judge set George Zimmerman’s bail at a mere $9,000, he was able to make bond—and walk away hours later—after his second arrest in connection with a domestic disturbance following his acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. Pending trial, Seminole County Judge Fred…
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Left of Black With Public Enemy’s Chuck D
For his Web series this week, Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal is joined by Chuck D of Public Enemy and his wife, Gaye Theresa Johnson. Professor Johnson teaches in the Department of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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Alabama Posthumously Pardons 3 Scottsboro Boys
It was one of those events that helped sparked the modern civil rights movement, prompting protests over racial injustice and two milestone decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1931 a group of nine black teenagers were fighting false charges that they had raped two white women. All of them ended up serving time after…
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How a Racist Serial Killer Restored My Faith in the Death Penalty
Last month, headlines blared, “U.S. Death Penalty Support Lowest in More Than 40 Years.” Based on that pronouncement, one might assume that an overwhelming number of Americans oppose the capital punishment. That assumption would be wrong. If anyone actually read past the provocative headlines and read the actual data, 60 percent of Americans still support…
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James McBride Wins National Book Award; Maya Angelou Honored
Sometimes it’s the pain of loss that pushes the creative. James McBride won the National Book Award in fiction, and upon accepting his award he spoke about his recent tragedies. He told the audience of 700 guests at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City that he wrote The Good Lord Bird—his novel about a…