culture

Controversial scholar Cornel West has taken aim at civil rights leaders again. This time he hits them for ignoring “Wall Street criminality,” saying that money has corrupted American culture, according to the Raw Story. At book launching event on August 24 following the 50th Anniversary March on Washington, West condemned mainstream civil rights leaders for…

This New York Post story about Joel Donaldson, a 21-year-old man who attempted to rob a woman for her cellphone in broad daylight in Brooklyn, N.Y., has two lessons.  Joel Donaldson, 21, allegedly punched his victim in the face before snatching her phone at around 2:30 p.m. at Court and Remsen streets, just steps from…

In New York City, city lawyers report a sharp decrease in the number of stop-and-frisk encounters in the second quarter of 2013, according to the New York Times. The numbers are the lowest they have been since Mayor Michael Bloomberg started implementing the program 11 years ago. From April through June, police officers conducted 58,088 involuntary…

(The Root) — It’s inevitable. Every January as we prepare to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, our Facebook and Twitter feeds become cluttered with obligatory links to King’s other famous quotes — gathered from various seminal texts, like the Letter From a Birmingham Jail and the Eulogy for the Martyred Children. (Jay Smooth gives…

(The Root) — In a March 2012 article for Baton Rouge, La.’s The Advocate, reporter Naomi Martin wrote, referring to me, “While some of his childhood friends still sell drugs on the streets of Baton Rouge, Toldson has a much different life as a professor at Howard University.” This statement confused me and made me…

(The Root) — On Aug. 28, 2008, 45 years to the day of Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, the slain leader’s eldest son, Martin Luther King III, spoke at the Democratic National Convention and celebrated the ascendance of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama. King said that his father would be “proud…

Women who participated in 1963’s March on Washington marched separately from the men as a way to bring attention to women’s contributions to the civil rights movement, NAACP Senior Adviser Jotaka Eaddy writes at Ebony. Eaddy encourages all people to salute these women, as well as the countless other nameless women who continue to work hard…

Kimberly Seals Allers at Mocha Manual presents a five-point response to folks who are opposed to the Black Breast-Feeding Week social media campaign she organized that began Monday. She explains why she’s tailoring the issue for the black community, writing that “there has been a gaping racial disparity in breast-feeding rates.” She encourages the campaign’s…

(The Root) — As Americans, we all know about the terrifying acts of violence that occurred during the civil rights movement: the snarling dogs that chased organizers in the streets, the protesters hosed by Southern authorities, the killings and beatings that took place on the sides of country roads. And as someone raised by a…