culture
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Black Women May Avoid Health Risks by Maintaining Weight
Obesity affects black women more than most other groups. But the Huffington Post reports that a new Duke University study found that just by focusing on maintaining their weight, rather than losing pounds, black women can reduce their chances of suffering from the health risks of obesity. The important thing is not to gain weight…
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VMAs: Appropriating Black Culture, but Where Were the Black Winners?
Several of the white musicians who won at MTV’s 2013 Video Music Awards have acts that are regurgitations of black sounds and imagery, yet none of the televised winners were black, Danielle Cadet points out in a piece at the Huffington Post. Everything about this year’s Video Music Awards was black, from its Brooklyn venue to Miley…
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Black Student 'Bleach-Bombed' at University of Texas
Last week, a black University of Texas student was walking to visit a friend on campus when he was pelted by a bleach-filled balloon. ThinkProgress says the incident concerns students who remember similar attacks taking place on the UT campus last year. On Wednesday, University of Texas student Bryan Davis, who is African American, was struck…
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Miley Cyrus: Acting a Fool, Not 'Acting Black'
(The Root) — Miley Cyrus made a fool of herself before and during her performance at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday. She showed up on the red carpet in designer (Dolce & Gabbana) spandex, wagging her tongue and humping the air — her version, I believe, of twerking. Once onstage, Cyrus — bafflingly…
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French Abolitionist as Savior in West Indies
(The Root) — This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black in Western Art Archive at Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. The urge to memorialize great moments in history is one of the defining aspects…
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My Struggle With Mental Illness
In the wake of actor Lee Thompson Young’s apparent recent suicide, Diamond Sharp courageously shares her story of dealing with mental illness on her Tumblr blog, Shepherds Not Sheep. Her piece addresses a sad reality: Even the most successful people, who seem to have it all together, can suffer from mental illness and commit suicide.…
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Celebrate Twerking; Don't Demonize It
In a piece for Disrupting Dinner Parties, Dominique Hazzard celebrates “twerking” — the dance rooted in black culture — while calling out white artists, like Miley Cyrus onstage at the MTV Video Music Awards, who appropriate it. She says the dominant culture has associated twerking with hypersexualization, which has caused people to demonize it, not…
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Colo. Republican: Chicken Causes Blacks' Poor Health
Colorado Republican state Sen. Vicki Marble, during a task force discussion about poverty, referenced chicken as one of the reasons for health problems — including sickle-cell anemia, apparently — in the black community, the Denver Post reports. Marble also made a comment about how Mexicans ate healthier in their native country before immigrating to the United States,…
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South Carolina Restaurant Denies Service to Black Group
Michael Brown, a black South Carolinian, and two dozen of his family members and friends were asked to leave a Wild Wing Cafe in Charleston because a white customer complained that she felt threatened by the group, the Daily Mail reports. Unable to reach the family sports bar and restaurant’s corporate headquaraters to report the incident,…
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Zimmerman Lawyer Says His Client Should Not Have Visited Gun Factory
On Friday The Root reported a story via TMZ about George Zimmerman’s visit to Kel-Tec factories, which manufactures the gun Zimmerman used to kill Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman was reportedly inquiring about a shotgun and even took pictures in celebrity fashion. But even the lawyer who helped him get an acquittal for both second-degree-murder and manslaughter…