culture

(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…

(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…

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.…

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…

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,…

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,…

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…

NBA player Lamar Odom has had problems with drug use since the early days of his NBA career. But if TMZ reports are true, the problem could be more intense than the marijuana use to which he has admitted in the past. Odom could be addicted to crack cocaine. TMZ broke the story … Lamar…

The U.S. Postal Service on Friday unveiled a new stamp that commemorates the historic 1963 March on Washington, the Associated Press reports. The image shows marchers carrying placards calling for jobs and equal rights, with the Washington Monument as a backdrop. Rep. John Lewis remembers the moment well: More than 250,000 people marching toward the…

Writing at the Washington Post, Courtland Milloy expresses disappointment with Saturday’s commemorative 50th anniversary March on Washington, calling it “a day filled with irony as speakers criticized the status quo that some black leaders have helped maintain.” Unlike the march in 1963, organized by socialist intellectuals A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, the updated version…