culture
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Vitamin D Deficiency Linked to Preterm Births in Black Women
Black women are more likely to deliver premature babies when a vitamin D deficiency is found during pregnancy, a new study, led by the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, has found. According to the research, which included Puerto Rican women, premature birth in nonwhite mothers naturally going into labor before the pregnancy…
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Survival First When Facing Street Harasser
(The Root) — “When a guy asks for your number on the street and you say, ‘I have a man,’ and he says, ‘Your man doesn’t let you have friends?’ How do you put an end to this convo? Apparently I’m answering wrong, because when I do it opens up dialogue, which results in me…
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'Best Man' Fans Wait 14 Years for Sequel
(The Root) — “You know, people really know me from The Best Man. I’ve done five other movies since then, but it always comes back to The Best Man. It was time to do the sequel.” –Malcolm D. Lee, director, The Best Man Holiday The year is 1999, and a consistent stream of films directed…
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Stop Hating on Poor Blacks Who Buy Expensive Stuff
In the aftermath of allegations of racial profiling at Barneys and Macy’s, Tressie McMillan Cottom checks in on criticism of the shoppers, who some say shouldn’t have been spending beyond their means in the first place. “Poor people make stupid, illogical decisions to buy status symbols,” she writes at her blog, Tressiemc, “for the same…
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Sen. Cory Booker Takes Office
(The Root) — Thursday will be a whirlwind day for the new senator from New Jersey, Cory Booker. His public swearing-in at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., will be conducted by Vice President Joe Biden, and later in the afternoon he’ll visit with President Barack Obama at the White House. Booker will be one…
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'Baby Love' Writer on Muse of 1st Novel
(The Root) — Almost halfway through Rebecca Walker’s haunting debut novel, Adé: A Love Story, I realized that dog-earing was a fool’s errand. Every sentence was a gift. Every new paragraph packed with colors, scents and italicized sounds I had to see, smell and hear again. Soon the book’s pages were more bent than not.…
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Chris Brown's Fans Need to Sit Down
“A ‘Free Chris Brown!’ rally? Really? Michael Arceneaux writes in a piece at Ebony that likens the R&B crooner’s fans to enablers after they protested his arrest this weekend in Washington, D.C., because of an apparent altercation. I hate the phrase “you people,” but what in the hell is wrong with you people? A “Free Chris…
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Why Obamacare Will Succeed
Earl Ofari Hutchinson writes at his blog, the Hutchinson Report News, that while glitches have dogged the rollout of Obamacare, the importance of these problems in the “overall initial implementation of Obamacare has been wildly overblown.” The GOP controlled House Ways and Means is the first of the three GOP congressional committees “investigating” Obamacare to…