culture

The Miami Herald‘s Leonard Pitts Jr. checks in our growing tendency to focus on our screens instead of at what’s in front of us. The observation comes after the recent incident when San Francisco commuters were so engrossed in technology that they missed a man brandishing a handgun then shooting a passenger in the head.…

The federal government’s anti-poverty programs have largely ignored a vast number of childless adults living in poverty, the New York Times editorial board writes in a piece that disassembles the Republican Party’s relentless assault on the programs. For impoverished Americans, the biggest obstacle to health insurance remains the refusal of 26 mostly Republican-led states to expand their…

Writing at BET, Keith Boykin dissects the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.’s recent tweet that Obamacare is a derogatory term coined by failed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney that should be retired. No matter what it’s called, Boykin argues, it’s time to put the beleaguered law to work. Rev. Jesse Jackson made an unusual announcement this week. On…

As the federal government shutdown heads into its second week, Senate leaders are poised to take over talks in an effort to reopen offices and avert a potential debt default. President Barack Obama met Saturday at the Oval Office with Democratic Senate leaders, including Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Dick Durban of Illinois,…

Comedy Central’s The Daily Show host Jon Stewart was left nearly speechless after 16-year-old Nobel Prize-nominee Malala Yousafzai, who survived a brutal attack by the Taliban last year because of her support for education, told him what she would do in the face of another assault. “I would tell him how important education is, and…

At the Wrap‘s Lucas Shaw says that CodeBlack Entertainment, a small, revitalized production company, hopes to be at the center of a Hollywood renaissance of films about African Americans, including Lee Daniels’ The Butler and Oscar hopeful 12 Years a Slave.  For 15 years, Jeff Clanagan sold comedy specials and faith-based movies to people watching at…

Gold diggers. Baby mamas. Uneducated sisters. Ratchet women. Angry black women. Mean black girls. Unhealthy black women. Black barbies. Negative imagery and stereotypes of black women abound in today’s media, writes Dawnie Walton at Essence, which tackles the matter in its November issue.  In our November issue (on stands October 11), ESSENCE presents the sobering…

Austin Kaluba, in a piece at the Zambia Daily Mail, turns a critical eye on Barack Obama’s handling of racism in America and finds the first U.S. black president’s silence worrisome. Obama, he says, has won so many battles, “apart from the race war that defines America.” No one can deny that he is among the…

(The Root) — Minnesota Vikings star running back Adrian Peterson received an outpouring of support from celebrities and fans alike on Twitter this weekend after the death of his 2-year-old son. The child reportedly was hospitalized in South Dakota after he was attacked by his mother’s boyfriend, Joseph Robert Patterson, 27, who was arrested and…

A Red Lobster waitress who was suspended after posting an online image of a receipt containing a racial slur instead of a tip has received $10,000, after a fundraising effort by outraged supporters.  Toni Christina Jenkins, of Franklin, Tenn., was suspended after posting an image of the receipt on her Facebook page Sept. 10. The…