culture

Lee Daniels’ The Butler defied expectations this weekend as it became the No. 1 film at the box office, Deadline Hollywood reports. Universal’s Kick Ass 2 was on track to be the top ticket-seller. Tracking showed Universal’s Kick Ass 2 (playing in 2,940 theaters) would be the #1 film this weekend. In fact Lee Daniels‘ The Butler (2,933 theaters) from The Weinstein…

(The Root) — They could have been lining up final putts at Mink Meadows Golf Course or stuffing clams for a “5-7” with friends. Instead, the several hundred vacationers swarmed into the Old Whaling Church on Martha’s Vineyard Thursday evening, clutching some of the most coveted tickets of the island’s summer season. For those with…

(The Root) — On Aug. 28, 2013, The Root will recognize the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom with a full-day digital forum on Twitter, dedicated to today’s most pressing civil rights issues. Experts, activists and celebrities will lead the global Twitter community in a virtual march, highlighting a variety of topics — including criminal justice, education and immigration…

Dave Chappelle officially returns to stand-up comedy next week at the Oddball Comedy and Curiosity Festival in Austin, Texas, in a new 15-city tour presented by the Funny or Die website, the New York Times reports. And he’s got jokes. Mr. Chappelle didn’t just walk away from a $50 million contract [in 2005] and the…

Philadelphia’s public schools will open on time in September after city officials Thursday announced plans to borrow $50 million, the New York Times reports. On Sept. 9, schools will open with minimum staffing and greatly reduced extracurricular activities and other programs. Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. had been threatening to delay opening schools if the city…

(The Root) — White feminism’s disregard for black women’s issues is nothing new, and sexism in black power movements from the United States to South Africa is also well documented. So it was no surprise when Twitter exploded on Monday with the #solidarityisforwhitewomen trending topic. Writer Mikki Kendall started the tag in response to the…

(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…