culture
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When Should Rappers Hang Up the Microphone?
When I was perusing the list of new-release albums from this past Oct. 13, it dawned on me after some time that three of the artists—Wu-Tang, Camp Lo and Krayzie Bone (with his group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony)—all released albums that I absolutely loved exactly 20 years ago. In 1997 I turned 16, obtained my driver’s license…
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The Culture of Male Silence: Men Treat Sexual Assault Like America Treats White Supremacy
I am not a religious man by any measure, but there are universal truths to which I adhere. I believe that love is a byproduct of love. I believe that hate made love to an orange, had a petty-ass baby, and that’s how we got the grapefruit. I believe that cats were put on earth…
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Betsy DeVos, Our Educational System Helps Produce Harvey Weinsteins and We Need to Change That
Editor’s note: Once a month, the National Interest column will tackle broader questions about what the country should do to increase educational opportunities for black youths. The New York Times’ explosive revelations of Harvey Weinstein’s three-decades-long career of sexual assault laid bare the prevalence of rape culture in our society. Sexism is a national problem…
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What Pitbull Gets Wrong When He Says ‘Immigrants Built the United States of America’
It’s one thing to underscore the vast contributions immigrants have made to the United States of America. It’s another to completely erase the egregious history of slavery while benefiting from it. Rapper Pitbull demonstrated such a faux pas last week at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. It was there that Telemundo held its 2017…
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Dear White Women: Interracial Relationships and Biracial Children Do Not Absolve You of Racism
There she was: a blond woman with big blue eyes, hair cornrowed tight, with her caramel-colored black child sitting in the back seat. The question, on a mutual friend’s Facebook post, asked if voters were happy with their decision to elect Donald Trump president. The white woman responded that she was satisfied with the job…
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Twitter Has a Serious Harassment and Abuse Problem but Doesn’t Seem to Want to Cure It
Every single day on Twitter, I encounter abuse and harassment in some form or another. I’m targeted for being a woman; I’m targeted for being black; I’m targeted for being a journalist; and I’m targeted for being a black woman who works for a black media organization. It’s nothing new. It’s been happening for a…
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#RelationshipGoals: 10 Reasons We Love This Is Us Couple Beth and Randall
After the dysfunction of Scandal’s Olivia and Fitz, Issa and Lawrence of Insecure, and just about every reality-TV couple, Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) and Randall (Sterling K. Brown) on NBC’s This Is Us are just the representation of #BlackLove that viewers need. The Pearsons offer something viewers haven’t seen for some time (if ever): a…
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The Smithsonian Is Creating a Dope Hip-Hop Anthology
When MC Lyte broke into the hip-hop world as a pioneering solo female rapper, she wasn’t thinking about making history. Like most aspiring artists, she wanted to be on the radio. “I was a lover of hip-hop. I went to the hip-hop clubs. I started rapping in elementary school … at 12, I started keeping…
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On Watching a Black Woman Let Wypipo Touch Her Hair
At the intersection of divine providence and the collection of complex chemical reactions that cause us to convert oxygen into carbon dioxide and that we have chosen to call “life,” there still exists a nether region that can be explained only by the ancient African proverb, “Shit happens.” Shit happened to me last night. Well,…