culture

(The Root) — “My family is from Sierra Leone, but we do have a legend of sorts. I think it’s true, but because of the civil war that happened there, it would be quite difficult to get information from Sierra Leone. “My grandfather’s father was supposedly a half-Scottish, half-Greek man. It’s not clear how or…

In a piece at The Atlantic, Jordan Weissmann turns the spotlight on white privilege through the prism of a new study that finds that as youths, many successful white male entrepreneurs engaged in “aggressive, illicit, risk-taking activities.” Men of color, however, have been saddled with rap sheets for committing the very same crimes, hampering their…

Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker, the state’s freshly minted Democratic Senate candidate, is not in line to become the new black leader, argues John McWhorter at Time. His interests are too disparate and too tied to the status quo. The main criticism of Booker seems to be his open embrace of the Powers That Be…

At Salon, Brittney Cooper urges the media and the black community to end unrelenting attacks on black women, following the uproar surrounding the now-pulled “Harriet Tubman Sex Tape” video on Russell Simmons’ YouTube network. “With a scarily consistent frequency,” she writes, “black women’s political histories and needs are not only minimized but utterly discounted in…

U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman (R.-Texas) said it’s “silly” for the Missouri chapter of the NAACP to call for a federal probe into an incident involving a man who wore a mask of President Barack Obama during a controversial performance last weekend at the state fair, Fox News reports. “A rodeo clown is really a nominal…

The strain of poverty is traumatizing enough, but the scars can be lasting and even deadly when it occurs early in life, the Huffington Post reports. Whites in the U.S. live about five years longer than blacks because of socioeconomic factors, not genetics, the report shows. And the stress elevates levels of stress hormones and…

In a rare post-baby outing Wednesday night in Los Angeles, rapper Kanye West watched the Los Angeles Dodgers play the New York Mets, Yahoo reports. But he didn’t get the warm welcome he’s used to receiving during performances. When West was shown on the jumbotron at Dodgers Stadium, the “Black Skinhead” rapper was booed by…

Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams and T.I. (real name: Clifford Harris) are taking the Marvin Gaye family and Bridgeport Music (owner of Funkadelic compositions) to court to protect Thicke’s song “Blurred Lines,” according to the Hollywood Reporter. The lawsuit, which was filed in a California federal court on Thursday, is a complaint about comparisons between two…

On Tuesday afternoon, while riding his bike on South Weinbach Avenue in Evansville, Ind., George Madison Jr., 38, waved to a couple of police officers nearby. From where Madison was, the officers looked familiar to him. After all, as a firefighter with the Evansville Fire Department, Madison is friends and has worked closely with many…

(The Root) — Going out to the latest Big Black Movie has been political for a long time. We don’t like how we are portrayed in film, so black people show up en masse at worthy opening nights. We want to reward film investors who show us doing more than just twerkin’ and jerkin’. We…