culture

(The Root) — On Thursday, at his Spring 2014 runway show in Paris, designer Rick Owens put forth a challenge to the rest of the fashion world: When it comes to diversity, step up your game. He didn’t say those words exactly, but he expressed them by bringing diversity to the runway in a style…

(The Root) — On Thursday Kanye West engaged in an “epic” Twitter battle with Jimmy Kimmel, after the talk-show host made fun of comments the rapper made during a BBC Radio One interview. “He said a lot of weird stuff,” Kimmel said Wednesday on Jimmy Kimmel Live. “He said he’s the No. 1 rock star…

On Thursday Marissa Alexander, 31, was given a second chance by an appellate court, which ordered that she be granted a new trial. According to CNN, Alexander’s case will be retried largely because the jury in her original trial was given the wrong instructions. Alexander was sentenced in March to 20 years in prison for…

(The Root) — I recall being somewhat disappointed the first time I watched Brown Sugar. Remember, this was the early 2000s. Movies like The Wood, The Best Man, Love & Basketball, How Stella Got Her Groove Back — basically anything starring Taye Diggs and/or Omar Epps — were the norm. Back then, it was anything…

In a piece at News One, Michael Arceneaux writes a satirical admonishment of Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who invoked a biblical quote to support his calls to drastically cut food stamps for the young, elderly and poor. “No matter, though, because like most arguments framed by way of a biblical citation, there’s more than likely several…

In a piercing piece at The Guardian, Gary Younge says that as costs rise and wages remain the same, the U.S. workforce is becoming less and less enamored of the pursuit of the American dream. The final chapter of America’s Promise, a high-school textbook on American history, ends with a rallying cry to national mythology. “The…

Republicans have tried their best to make Obamacare synonymous with the bogeyman before its implementation, but the Washington Post‘s Eugene Robinson writes that its success after Oct. 1 might prove to be their greatest foe. The GOP has tried its best to make Obamacare a synonym for bogeyman and convince people that it’s coming in…

We all know it’s a rare moment when public officials admit to bad decision-making, especially wrongdoing. It’s even rarer when they reverse bad decisions. But a North Carolina school board has done just that. The Randolph County Board of Education voted 6-1 on Wednesday to reverse a ban of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the Associated…