culture

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…

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…

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…

(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…