culture

Nadiah Rodriguez writes at Clutch magazine that Mister Cee’s wife must be coping with a boatload of “self-doubt, paranoia and humiliation” and that her ordeal should be discussed and addressed as vehemently as her husband’s. Her pain, and even her existence, is markedly absent from the conversation about Mister Cee. The situation reminds me of…

In a piece for The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates examines the decline in the marriage rate among black families and is not bothered it. He says that women today are determining if marriage advances “their interests as much as it once did,” and people should consider what women in the past had to endure in order…

As predicted by some film connoisseurs, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave received the People’s Choice Award as audience favorite at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival this past weekend, Deadline reports. The film, about a black violinist living in 1841 New York who is kidnapped and sold into slavery, is already being talked about…

In a revealing Q&A with New York magazine’s Vulture.com, Oprah Winfrey discusses how she took her television network, OWN, from life support to profitable. There were numerous factors, chief among them bringing in trusted charges Sheri Salata and Erik Logan to help right the ship, and giving her partners at Discovery Communications more of a…

Ever since he captivated audiences as Michael Lee on HBO’s The Wire, it seemed inevitable that Tristan Wilds would have a formidable acting career. But as he tells the Daily News, acting was never the plan; singing was his focus. Under the name “Mack Wilds,” a new persona he’s tailored specifically for the microphone, the…

It’s been more than six years since Isaiah Washington was unceremoniously dropped from the hit TV series Grey’s Anatomy for allegedly insulting co-star T.R. Knight with a derogatory gay slur. Since then, the actor has failed to secure a role as popular as Dr. Preston Burke, his character on the Shonda Rhimes-created medical drama, which…

(The Root) — Of course, back in 1820, when Washington Irving penned The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, most black folks were in chains, women were little more than decorative chattel and a headless horseman turned out to be a practical joke formed out of a pumpkin. Clearly, a black detective — free and female —…

The Associated Press is reporting that a North Carolina police officer has been charged with manslaughter in the shooting death of former Florida A&M University football player Jonathan A. Ferrell, 24, who was seeking help after a car accident in Charlotte. The deadly encounter was set in motion when a former college football player survived…

Jamelle Bouie, writing at the Daily Beast, concludes that the perennial debate among some whites about so-called unconventional black names says more about white ethnocentrism and racial inequality than black culture. Reddit isn’t just a clearinghouse for interviews, animal pictures, and crazy stories. It’s also a place where people ask questions and have discussions. Yesterday,…

“This is for four women who are not here,” Leonard Pitts Jr. writes at the Miami Herald in an evocative reflection on the lives of the four little girls who died in the Birmingham, Ala., church bombing. He pays homage to the accomplishments they were never able to achieve due to racial hatred. It is…