culture

Grambling State football players refused to travel to Jackson, Miss., to suit up in a game Saturday against Jackson State, after complaints about mold and mildew on equipment and in facilities fell on deaf ears, ESPN reports. The cancellation, announced Friday by officials at the school in Grambling, La., was also the result of leadership…

News 4 Jacksonville has unveiled disturbing letters written by Michael Dunn, the 45-year-old Florida man charged with last year’s shooting of 17-year-old Jordan Davis. The incident occurred after Dunn, who is white, and the black teen clashed over loud music while in their cars. Dunn, who says he acted in self-defense and writes that he…

(The Root) — Maybe Lorne Michaels doesn’t have Facebook. That would explain how the eternal executive producer of Saturday Night Live, the launching pad of enviable comedy careers since 1975, is having trouble finding black comedians to star on his show. Because — let the Internet tell it — there are tons of black female…

Citing the case of autistic 14-year-old Avonte Oquendo of New York City, who disappeared two weeks ago, Stacia L. Brown, writing at Salon, explores how racial bias can hamper investigations of missing minorities. Bias, she says, could also prevent passersby from helping the disabled teen and keep the media from reporting the story. In the…

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in the Vineyard Gazette (www.mvgazette.com) and is reprinted here with permission. When Charlotte Holloman was a little girl, only 8 years old, she and her parents visited the summer home of Harry T. Burleigh on Martha’s Vineyard. Mr. Burleigh, best known for his instrumental role in arranging and publishing…

Nikki Woods argues in a piece at BlackAmericaWeb that the extravagant lifestyles of pastors depicted on the Oxygen network’s reality show Preachers of L.A. are no justification for turning away from the black church. Were you one of the 1.1 million viewers who tuned into the [premiere] of the new hit reality show “Preachers of…

In a piece at The Guardian, black conservative commentator Crystal Wright hits her own party for failing to make good on its promise to reach out to minorities. Nearly a year after GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election, Republicans have resorted to subversive tactics in an Illinois congressional race to thwart the…

(The Root) — When Bluefield State College opened in the late 19th century, it was created to educate the children of black coal miners in segregated West Virginia. But political change, economic upheavals and changing demographics have resulted in a change in complexion at the HBCU. Today it is 90 percent white, according to NPR.…