culture
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NFL Making Headway With Race but Needs to Hire More Women
The NFL has made efforts to hire more people of color, the Associated Press’ Steve Reed reports at the Huffington Post, but the league should strengthen its “gender hiring practices.” The NFL received its fourth consecutive A grade for its racial hiring practices amid concerns over a significant drop in minority head coaches this season.…
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'12 Years a Slave' a Reminder That Male Slaves Used Brawn and Brains
At The Atlantic, Noah Berlatsky writes that unlike Django Unchained and Glory, 12 Years a Slave shows how some male slaves survived by using their brains, not just their brawn. Berlatsky also suggests that because the movie didn’t feature a combative male main character, the female characters developed in a substantive and authentic way. If…
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$50 Million to Save Black and Brown Boys
(Special to The Root) — Imagine that you walk into the newborn-nursery ward at an American hospital and you see 100 babies in their bassinets. You are then informed that 33 of these babies will spend time in jail or prison. This is the reality today for African-American males born in our country. As a…
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Black Waitress Claims She Was Fired Over Highlights
And once again black hair is in the news — this time the story is about blond highlights. When 25-year-old Farryn Johnson of Baltimore decided to put blond streaks in her hair, she didn’t think it would be a big deal. After all, working at Hooters, she had seen many women show up at work…
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Kanye West and Kim Kardashian Are Engaged
By all accounts it was a made-for-TV moment, and considering the people involved, we just might see it on the small screen. Monday night, for Kim Kardashian’s 33rd birthday, Kanye West proposed to her in front of friends and family at AT&T Park in San Francisco, Eonline.com is reporting. The reality-television superstar said yes to…
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Diddy Launches Revolt TV
On Monday at 8 p.m. EDT, more than 34 million homes had access to Sean “Diddy” Combs’ new brainchild, Revolt TV, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The new cable channel, which is available to 22 million Comcast subscribers and 12 million Time Warner Cable customers, is Diddy’s major play into the television world. In launching…
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Girl, 5, Kills Herself With Gun
(The Root) — It was supposed to be a quick trip to the store, a 10:30 a.m. walk for a gallon of milk. On June 23 in New Orleans, Brandajah Smith — a dark-chocolate confection of a 5-year-old with a mind full of questions — needed milk for her cereal. But getting to the store…
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Skip Gates' 'Many Rivers' Premieres
(The Root) — “The story of the African-American people is the story of the settlement and growth of America itself, a universal tale that all people should experience,” says Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research at Harvard University. Gates, who…
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Why Are Black Men on a Venetian Tomb?
(The Root) — This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black in Western Art Archive at Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute, part of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. This week’s image features a detail from the…
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'12 Years a Slave' Was Too Much
(The Root) — On Friday I had what I thought was a brilliant idea. With a busy two days ahead, and a director friend insisting that the first day of a movie’s opening weekend counted more than the other days, I would catch a late-night showing of 12 Years a Slave. I mentioned my plans…