culture

(The Root) — Two generations of Americans might recall, as vividly as yesterday, the waking radio chatter and day-breaking TV news reports of March 9, 1997, the morning the Notorious B.I.G. was shot and killed in Los Angeles.  Surely Brooklyn, N.Y., remembers.  Sixteen years after his death, Christopher Wallace occupies a larger-than-life prominence in the…

(The Root) — Eight years old was far too young for me to lose my virginity. And I certainly didn’t have the opportunity to lose it at that age. But if I could have, I would have. It was all I could think about, and it was all any of my teammates on my little…

At the Nation, Mychal Denzel Smith says that a viral video of white Philadelphia police officers harassing black pedestrians highlights the inherent problems in stop and frisk and underscores a larger problem in America — racism. This video was recorded on September 27 and uploaded to YouTube a few days later. It has recently made…

The Daily Beast‘s Jamelle Bouie examines the Tea Party’s plans for its next battle against President Obama in the aftermath of its devastating shutdown defeat. Members are now charging that Americans never approved the Affordable Care Act, he says. This was supposed to be Jim DeMint’s moment. As head of the Heritage Foundation, chief sponsor…

Pastor Marvin Winans missed an opportunity to begin “training a child up” when he recently refused to bless the son of an unwed mother, writes Washington Post columnist Rahiel Tesfamariam. Prominent pastor Marvin Winans of Perfecting Church in Detroit joins a growing list of preachers who have recently made headlines for taking theological positions that…

Fox Searchlight’s 12 Years a Slave, directed by Steve McQueen and starring Chiwetel Ejifor, triumphed this weekend at the box office during its limited opening in 19 theaters, grossing $960,000, Deadline Hollywood reports.   Searchlight said Sunday that the film, produced by New Regency, reached an “incredibly diverse audience,” adding, “We have been attracting both…

A young Detroit mother was heartbroken recently when her request was denied to have her 2-year-old son blessed by famed gospel singer and pastor Marvin Winans during a special ceremony. Why? Well, it seems that Winans, pastor of the Perfecting Church in Detroit, has a strict policy of not blessing the babies of unwed mothers…

(The Root) — The NAACP Saturday announced that Lorraine C. Miller, a member of the national board of directors since 2008, would become interim president and CEO of the 104-year-old organization. In doing so, she’s the organization’s first interim president and the first woman to fill the president-executive secretary’s role since 1916, a spokesman told…

(The Root) — The “Best Colleges” rankings from US News & World Report are usually an opportunity for many colleges and universities to go into PR overdrive to attract the best and brightest to their campuses. For other schools, it’s an opportunity to take stock of their aspirational goals. For Howard University, the school’s decline…

Writing at Salon, Andrew O’Hehir says that the poisonous effects of white supremacy, clearly depicted in 12 Years a Slave, “endure in American politics” and were on full display during the 16-day shutdown of the federal government. Five years before the beginning of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee – future commander of the Confederate States of…