culture

Saying that a new campaign could save lives in the African-American community, actress Tia Mowry has embarked on an effort to encourage people to get flu vaccinations, according to Atlanta Black Star. Mowry, who co-stars with her twin sister on the Style Network’s Tia & Tamera, has teamed with MedImmune Specialty Care, a division of…

The hits just keep on coming for Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker. As he runs for the U.S. Senate in a special election, he has had to answer questions about his sexuality, tall tales in his speeches (remember T-Bone and Wazn Miller?) and even his growing gut. Now the New York Times is reporting on private Twitter…

In a piece at the Huffington Post, the Rev. Al Sharpton inveighs against mounting gun violence in America. He says that lawmakers and civic leaders have a moral obligation to fight gun lobbyists and the laws that feed the crisis. It’s easy to sit in Congress or in a gated secluded community and talk down…

(The Root) — “I saw on Twitter that you ‘didn’t see the big deal about cooking’ in reference to the New York Post story on Tuesday, ‘I’m 124 Sandwiches Away From an Engagement Ring.’ I think it’s irresponsible to tell educated women with careers to get in the kitchen to snag a man. What happened…

A family’s decision to invite the homeless to attend their daughter’s canceled wedding reception is a reminder that something can always be salvaged to bless someone else, Nikki Woods writes at BlackAmericaWeb. A beautiful story of a couple who donated their daughter’s wedding reception dinner to 200 homeless people at Atlanta’s “Hosea Feed the Hungry,”…

(The Root) — The national celebrations and commemorations surrounding the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington have, once again, marked race as a subject of exploration in popular culture. The recent critical and commercial success of Lee Daniels’ The Butler, which offered an epic cinematic depiction of the civil rights movement’s heroic period, has…

If Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino ever decided to have a face-to-face conversation about their thoughts on each other’s work and respective careers, the best person to moderate the discussion would have to be Samuel L. Jackson.  Jackson has appeared in more than 100 films, but arguably his most memorable roles have been in movies…

(The Root) — A photographer-video artist, a dancer-choreographer and a playwright are the three black people among this year’s group of 24 MacArthur Fellowship recipients. Carrie Mae Weems, 60, from Syracuse, N.Y., was awarded for her work in the field of photography and videography. Of Weems, the MacArthur Foundation writes: Her intimate depictions of children, adults,…

The House Republicans’ recent vote to cut $40 billion from the food stamp program is a demonstration of their animosity toward Americans of color, Brittney Cooper argues in a piece for Salon. Cooper describes how the Republican Party, beginning in the Kennedy era, intentionally manufactured the myth of a lazy African-American subgroup that does not…