culture

Bill de Blasio is the early front-runner, garnering nearly 40 percent of the vote in the New York Democratic primary mayoral race, reports NY1. De Blasio, who is currently the city’s public advocate, made waves in the last few weeks, not only with his liberal take on issues like ending stop and frisk but also with…

Ramou Sarr went through a long process of ridding herself of thoughts that she was ugly and inferior as an African-American girl, especially growing up in predominantly white environments. At Black Girls Talking, Sarr describes how she once yearned for blond hair. The ways in which my self-hatred manifested itself slowly changed, however. It became…

“Brandy’s little sister lame man he know it now/When a real brother hold you down, you supposed to drown.”  Those were the opening lyrics that Kanye West rapped Monday on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. West was performing “Bound 2,” featured on his latest album, Yeezus. On the recorded version, however, no such lyric appears. According…

Whispers about Andre 3000 playing Jimi Hendrix in a movie have been buzzing for a while now, but a New York Times article about the complicated history and re-emergence of the biopic genre brings the rapper’s star turn as the legendary guitar genius front and center. Andre — billed as André Benjamin — plays the…

On Tuesday Mark O’Mara, the lead defense attorney in the George Zimmerman second-degree-murder trial, told CNN that he would not be representing Zimmerman in any legal proceedings involving estranged wife Shellie Zimmerman, who filed for divorce last week. “I am not representing George Zimmerman in his recent domestic altercation case or his impending divorce case,”…

Last week the story of 7-year-old Tiana Parker sparked a national outrage. Tiana was sent home from Deborah Brown Community School because her dreadlocks didn’t fit the dress code, which stated that “hairstyles such as dreadlocks, afros, mohawks, and other faddish styles are unacceptable.” The negative publicity — including a petition that received more than…

On Days 1 and 2 of the Rock the Bells hip-hop festival, which took place this past weekend in San Bernadino, Calif., two surprise performers stole the show from all the other artists, and they did so without appearing in the flesh. Similar to last year’s Tupac hologram performance at Coachella alongside Dr. Dre and…

(The Root) — “W. Kamau Bell is one of America’s few leftist black male feminists from San Francisco with his own television talk show, and for that alone he should be treasured,” Salon wrote last year. He’s also a straight, married young dad who’s an outspoken proponent of marriage equality and gay rights. Welcome to…

(The Root) — You know how sometimes you just know something, even when you have no proof? Call it a “feeling” in my gut or the past being a predictor of the future. But whatever it was, when I heard about 7-year-old Tiana Parker, who was being harassed by her school because of her locks,…

(The Root) — The doors of Birmingham, Ala.’s 16th Street Baptist Church are open seven days a week, and almost every day, visitors from across the country and around the world come to see the place where a bomb killed four little girls Sept. 15, 1963, at the height of the struggle for civil rights…