culture

The next time someone suggests that online dating is only for the loneliest and most desperate people who can’t get a date in real life, tell them about Nana Meriwether. The 2012 Miss USA beauty queen, who resides in New York City and is of South African descent, was recently discovered on the popular dating…

We all know rappers tell tall tales about a lot of things, from the alleged life of crime they lived before they made it big or what they would do if they saw the cops. (No one’s going to shoot a cop for real. Come on.) And no subject is more popular to lie about…

Shaila Dewan at the New York Times explores why America classifies people by race and determines that some classifications remain useful. She says, however, that “Caucasian” has outlived its usefulness in today’s society, much like “Negroid,” and should be retired.  As a racial classification, the term Caucasian has many flaws, dating as it does from a time…

(The Root) — Starting this weekend, the streets of Washington, D.C., will be flooded by a sea of red. With letters on their sleeves and immeasurable pride in their hearts, the women of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. will flock to the city that birthed their organization 100 years ago. While every Delta woman is…

The Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage is good for the LGBT community, but it doesn’t lower the unemployment rate or provide health care for gay people of color, Jasmyne A. Cannick writes at The Advocate. Cannick uses bits and pieces of her own story to describe how the right to marry is not a…

MSNBC‘s Adam Serwer writes that Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act could save the law because it allows the federal government to require jurisdictions with recent records of discrimination to submit their election-law changes for clearance. Voting rights advocates are testing whether a little-used provision of the Voting Rights Act could limit the damage of…

The New York Post is reporting that Mariah Carey was rushed to the hospital late Monday after dislocating her shoulder while filming her latest video. The superstar was rushed to New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery on the Upper East Side late last night to have her shoulder reset after she fell while filming a…

While Johnny Depp’s latest effort in The Lone Ranger as Tonto may be a box office flop, the actor has a great personal story to tell. New research from Ancestry.com reveals that he is a direct descendant of Elizabeth Key, a former slave who worked within the law to win her freedom on July 21, 1656. Before there was…

As if people of color didn’t already have enough to worry about, now Harvard sociologist David Williams says that racial minorities who live in race-conscious societies get sick at younger ages, have more severe illnesses and die sooner than whites, according to Psychology Today. Williams was one of several presenters at a conference last week…