culture
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Why a Black Man Says No to 'The Butler' and '12 Years a Slave'
At the Guardian, black Canadian author Orville Lloyd Douglas says he won’t be seeing Lee Daniels’ The Butler or 12 Years a Slave because they were created to engender white guilt. Further, the so-called race dramas are unlikely to teach viewers anything new, he writes. Lee Daniel’s new film The Butler is a box office success, already generating…
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O'Reilly: Trayvon Died Because He 'Looked a Certain Way'
Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly on Friday returned to the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. While blatantly ignoring the issue of racial profiling, he and his guest, former U.S. Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), rationalized that the unarmed 17-year-old was shot by George Zimmerman, the former neighborhood-watch captain, because he “looked a certain way,” according to the…
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Paula Deen Returns, Sheds More Tears
Beleaguered celebrity chef Paula Deen struggled to hold back tears Saturday as she received a warm welcome from the crowd during an appearance at a Houston cooking show, the Associated Press reports. Saturday’s event was Deen’s first public appearance since June when it was revealed that in an earlier legal deposition she acknowledged using racial…
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LeBron James Weds Fiancee in San Diego
The Miami Heat’s LeBron James on Saturday married fiancee Savannah Brinson at San Diego’s posh Grand Del Mar Hotel, according to the Associated Press. About 200 guests were present for the ceremony, said one of the people, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because the wedding was private and the couple had yet to…
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Not Your Typical Spike Lee Joint
(The Root) — The first clue that 4 Little Girls isn’t going to be your typical Spike Lee joint comes in the film’s opening minutes: Folk singer Joan Baez mournfully sings “Birmingham Sunday,” the 1964 song inspired by the deaths of Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins and Cynthia Wesley in the 16th Street…
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What the 1963 Church Bombing Taught Us
(The Root) — In 1988, not long after civil rights lawyer, and Southern Poverty Law Center co-founder, Morris Dees won a case against the Ku Klux Klan that bankrupted one of the hate group’s major arms, Dees took the podium at a national NAACP gathering. He talked about 19-year-old Michael Donald’s 1981 death at the…
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Condoleezza Rice Lost a Friend in Birmingham Bombing
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently recounted the harrowing story of losing her childhood friend in the racial attack on the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., when she was just 8 years old, Reuters reports. “As an 8-year-old, you don’t think about terror of this kind,” said Rice, who recounted on Friday…
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Will Congress Fix the Voting Act This Year?
Brentin Mock writes at Colorlines that this year congressional leaders are likely to restore protections to the Voting Rights Act, which was gutted by the Supreme Court this summer. The speculation comes amid a series of hearings, meetings and verbal commitments from congressional members and civic leaders, he writes. A few weeks ago Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a…
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Birmingham Church Bombing: Not an Isolated Racial Horror
In a piece at the Huffington Post, Earl Ofari Hutchinson writes that the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four little girls 50 years ago in Birmingham, Ala., was just another example on a long list of “racist terror attacks that included beatings, shootings, mob attacks, ambushes and, of course, bombings.” It should never…
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Voices Rise in Call for Runway Diversity
Clothing represented the only pop of color on the runways during New York City’s Fashion Week, Karen Grisby Bates writes at NPR. She says it’s time to end longstanding racial discrimination on the fashion industry’s runways. That lack of diversity has been a perennial problem in the fashion industry — at home and abroad —…