culture

Michaela Angela Davis at Jezebel joins the flock of literary giants parsing 12 Years a Slave by examining the complicated relationship that was created during slavery and still persists between black women and white women. Patsey and the Mistress Epps personify Black and White American women’s painful slave legacy. American slavery was an insidious economic institution devised…

Black women are less likely than white women to be infected by the most common strains of the human papillomavirus, and as a result, the current HPV vaccine may be ineffective for black women, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. The new findings were discovered by researchers at Duke University School of Medicine and presented at the annual…

Chris Brown isn’t out of the woods yet, but the charges against him have been reduced to a simple assault misdemeanor, CNN reports. The embattled R&B singer and his bodyguard were arrested over the weekend after a scuffle outside the W Hotel in Washington, D.C. While it is unclear whether Brown initiated the altercation or was merely…

Another shopper has come forth with a shopping-while-black claim, making this the fourth such allegation this month, the New York Daily News reports.   Art Palmer, a 56-year-old physical trainer, says that four plain-clothes police stopped him after he purchased several Polo dress shirts and ties from Macy’s store using his Macy’s platinum card and American Express…

Another day, and another racist blackface Halloween incident. This one might have never been discovered had the Utah Jazz not tweeted out the photo, according to USA Today. That’s right, the official Utah Jazz twitter account retweeted a fan photo in which two white guys set out to re-create a vintage Karl Malone and John…

Penn State will pay 26 sexual-abuse victims of Jerry Sandusky, the former assistant football coach, approximately $59.7 million for an end to their claims against the university, the New York Times reports. The settlement is “another step forward in the healing process for those hurt by Mr. Sandusky, and another step forward for Penn State,”…

12 Years a Slave differs from traditional black slave films in featuring nuanced black voices, Wesley Morris observes in Grantland. It’s one of the first slave films to discredit the idea that “black stories are nothing without a white voice to tell them that black people can’t live without the aid of white ones,”  Morris writes.  It’s…

(The Root) — Once upon a time, a crazed radio host called a team of basketball-playing black women “nappy-headed hos.” When confronted about his racism, he blamed hip-hop. Then suddenly everyone was talking about rappers dropping n-bombs and calling women “hos,” and Oprah finally addressed hip-hop in a two-part special on why hip-hop sucks. And…

The New York attorney general wants to know what really happened at Attica some 40 years ago when inmates took over the prison and state troopers and guards took it back, the Associated Press reports. During a five-day standoff at the prison in September 1971, more than 35 prisoners and hostages were killed. Attorney General Eric…