culture

(The Root) — John Singleton’s Poetic Justice was released in 1993 during a watershed period that saw a number of black films entering theaters. Janet Jackson starred as Justice, a poetry-loving hairstylist (the works of Maya Angelou were prominently featured), and Tupac Shakur played Lucky, a postal worker with dreams of making it big as…

Florida’s Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said his officers followed protocol when they fired 15 shots at unarmed Roy Howard Middleton, 60, because he failed to comply with their commands, according to Salon. During an interview on Thursday with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, Morgan said that the officers saw a metallic object in Middleton’s hands as…

The Miami Herald is reporting that Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford has announced plans to order hearings this fall on the state’s controversial “Stand your ground” law. It is considered a victory for the Dream Defenders, a group of activists and professionals who began protesting at the capitol after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the…

Why are black female crime victims invisible? Joy Goh-Mah, at the Telegraph, asks the pertinent question after the global media virtually ignored recent news about the bodies of three black women being discovered in trash bags in Cleveland. Would there have been a public outcry if the victims had been white? On the July 21 the bodies…

In an evocative piece at Salon, Myisha Cherry deconstructs racial and gender privilege. She says acknowledging such privileges forces people to admit they didn’t achieve everything on their own. Privilege is a systematic structure that grants unearned advantage to a select few on the basis of their identity. Peggy McIntosh describes privilege as an “invisible package… of special provisions” —…

Republican leaders are once again resorting to fear-mongering and empty rhetoric in an effort to block Barack Obama’s budget proposals, Earl Ofari Hutchinson writes at his blog. He examines the GOP’s relentless budget sparring matches with the president. GOP Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell is nothing if not persistent. And it’s always the same issue…

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…

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…

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…

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…