culture

As someone committed to the black family, Nick Chiles writes in a blog post at MyBrownBaby that he was stunned into silence when he learned that the ignominious accomplishments of 33-year-old Orlando Shaw — fathering 22 children by 14 women — might be rewarded with a reality show. First we got tortured by the travails…

On the heels of a recent campaign video in which Anthony Weiner proclaims that “quit isn’t the way we roll in New York City,” Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart writes that scandal-plagued mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner is dangerously close to becoming the person that people in his hometown love to hate. Folks may not like…

Writing at Ebony.com, France François explores “Trayvon’s Law,” a new set of policies and principles mapped out by the NAACP and the Dream Defenders, a group of young professionals and activists in Florida. If enacted legislatively in that state and others, the groups say, it could help avert another tragedy like the one that befell…

New York City’s attempt to limit the sale of large soft drinks is on hold after a midlevel appeals court ruled on Tuesday that the city’s Board of Health exceeded its legal authority, the Associated Press reports. Mayor Michael Bloomberg pledged to appeal the decision in an effort to fight obesity. In a unanimous opinion,…

“Another day in Florida” is how the Daily News put it in recounting the shooting of 60-year-old Roy Howard Middleton, a black man who was shot in the leg by police last weekend outside his home in Warrington, Fla., as he went to collect a pack of cigarettes from his mother’s car. Two Escambia County…

Cheryl Boone Isaacs, a marketer and longtime Hollywood insider, has been elected the first African-American president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the group that gives out the Oscars each year, the Los Angeles Times reports. Isaacs, a longtime academy insider who most recently held the job of first vice president, will serve a…

President Obama’s recent comment that America’s growing income inequality is “morally wrong” led CNN‘s John D. Sutter to explore whether income inequality is, in fact, a question of morality. He asked four experts with differing views for their perspectives. It’s getting harder to shock people with stats about income inequality. Americans know they live in…

In a piece for the Feminist Wire, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan advises black people on how to deal with these tough times, when even white people are talking about race and racism — and probably talking about it to you. – Racism will make you angry. You knew this already — you know the heat that…

As cable-news pundits make the rounds discussing black-on-black violence, in a piece for Gawker, Cord Jefferson argues that white-on-white crime is a problem, too, and points out that crimes committed by whites . Accompanying Jefferson’s article is a video of white surfers rioting in Huntington Beach, Calif. Many people don’t want to hear this kind…

(The Root) —Don Lemon, one of CNN’s highest-profile black anchors, triggered a recent firestorm of anger and recrimination when he suggested that African Americans should alter their personal behavior if they want to achieve racial equality. Lemon’s efforts at tough love admonished young black men for wearing baggy pants, castigated hip-hop for romanticizing prison culture,…