culture

Grantland‘s Rembert Browne checks in on Saturday Night Live’s history of race issues after some media critics and viewers complained loudly about the show’s six new cast members, all of whom are white. Saturday Night Live is a storied franchise that has found ways to cultivate stars until they’re ready to be released into the wild, while…

In a piece at Truthdig, Sonali Kolhatkar writes that Florida has a chance to redeem itself after George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. Another man is on trial for taking the life of another black male teenager in a similar case, and hopefully the criminal-justice system will work this time, she writes.…

(The Root) — Drake’s new album, Nothing Was the Same, sold more than 658,000 units in its first week, with the single “Hold On, We’re Going Home” demoting Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” from the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. The Toronto-born-and-bred MC’s personal best week ever puts him in second place…

A group of Tufts University researchers recently conducted a study about the appeal of what they call “outrage-based” political shows hosted by such polarizing figures as Rush Limbaugh on the right and Rachel Maddow on the left. They conclude that the reason people gravitate toward such fare is that it offers them a form of…

In Anderson, S.C., real estate developer Chuck Corley has his eyes on a row of boarded-up houses. They’re in good condition, and certainly refurbishable, but there’s one small problem: Slaves used to live there. NBC News recently reported on Corley and his plans to develop a row of buildings built in 1850 and rent them…

Beverly Johnson, the “first black supermodel,” tells Glamour in its November issue that brains and beauty mattered when she started in the fashion industry in the 1970s, according to the Daily Mail. Johnson, 60, recalls failing a typing test at a casting call in 1972 because she acted “like she couldn’t even type,” but won…

Hollywood director Steven Spielberg was among several luminaries honored with Harvard’s prestigious W.E.B. Du Bois Medal this week during the launch of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. The Root’s editor-in-chief, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Glenn H. Hutchins, whose $15 million gift helped establish the Hutchins Center, presided over the event Wednesday…

(The Root) — According to ABC News, Miriam Carey, the woman killed by police after driving her car into a White House barrier before leading police on a chase to the Capitol, was suffering from postpartum depression. The outlet quoted Carey’s mother as saying the 34-year-old woman had struggled with the illness following her daughter’s…

It is incumbent upon Howard University’s administrators to be transparent following the abrupt resignation of theh school’s president, Sidney Ribeau, which comes at a time when Howard is struggling to survive financially, Clinton Yates writes at the Washington Post. On a sunny fall day following Howard University’s abrupt leadership change, much of the campus was still…