culture
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Seth MacFarlane's New Show 'Dads': Racist?
The comedian’s new Fox show, Dads, is filled with racial jokes, but the producers claim that the real joke is on white men, according to the Wrap. Stereotypes abound on “Dads,” and come from the old-school-in-a-bad-way, socially out-of-step dads. One mistakes a woman of color for the maid. There’s a joke likening a boxing match…
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Democrats to Washington: Bail Out Detroit
A new national poll conducted by Quinnipiac University shows that while a majority of Democrats favor a federal bailout of Detroit, a wide margin of voters say Washington should steer clear of the foundering city. Fifty-one percent of Democrats favor Washington stepping in to provide federal assistance to the embattled city, which last month became…
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What Lil Wayne's New Single Says About America
Pointing out that patriotism and religion have always been used as weapons against people of color in the U.S., Monica Miller argues at BET that, like it or not, hip-hop artist Lil Wayne’s transgressive new single, “God Bless Amerika,” taps into the nation’s zeitgeist in the aftermath of George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death…
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Why Cornel West Is Wrong to Call Prisoners 'Precious'
Gregory Kane, writing at BlackAmericaWeb.com, says it’s impossible to decipher professor Cornel West’s latest rant — that black male prisoners are “precious” — because the argument is fundamentally flawed. Kane lists victims of some of those “precious” incarcerated men. This column will be about West and the “p” word: precious. Before [Cornel] West’s rant, I…
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Rangel Hits Tea Partiers, Calls Them 'White Crackers'
In a wide-ranging interview with the Daily Beast published on Friday, 83-year-old Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) railed against the Tea Party, likening members to whites in the South who fought to preserve segregation during the civil rights movement. He also hit Republicans, accusing the party of sabotaging American competitiveness. There is little question that Rangel is nearing…
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Strong Black Women Do Cry
Danielle C. Belton, writing at Clutch magazine, details her own emotional history in a fresh and revealing piece about, well, crying. She argues that it’s not just for white girls or something that black women do out of anger. Black women deal with a lot of “expectations” about our behavior and what we should or should…
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New Jersey's Poor Living in Tent Cities
Tent cities have sprung up in Camden, N.J., one of the poorest cities in the nation, and other parts of the state as residents struggle to make ends meet, according to My9NJ. A chef at a nearby kitchen that feeds the poor in Camden told My9NJ that some of the people have lost their jobs…
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How Do I Research My Gullah Heritage?
(The Root) — “I have an insatiable appetite for history and so does my father. He was born on Cherokee Plantation in Yemassee, S.C. (the Lowcountry), and that area still has a very rich Gullah heritage. “I have been able to go back to the 1880 census, but a lot of records in South Carolina…
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Hacker Prompts Colin Powell to Deny Affair
Former Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell has released a strong statement of denial after a hacker known as Guccifer threatened to distribute “very personal” emails sent to him by a female Romanian diplomat, the Smoking Gun reports. In a statement addressing his relationship with Corina Cretu, a member of the European Parliament who previously held a…
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July Jobs Numbers: Black Unemployment Down
(The Root) — The Labor Department released its July jobs report today, showing that the economy added 162,000 jobs last month, and the overall unemployment rate fell to 7.4 percent from 7.6 percent in June, according to the U.S. Labor Department. More good news: The overall unemployment rate for African Americans edged down to 12.6…