culture

(The Root) — I once wrote of the comparisons between tennis legend Arthur Ashe, known for his grace and quiet temperament on and off of the court, and President Obama, who, like Ashe, has been criticized for not being emotional or angry enough at times. What I didn’t write then is that part of why…

Conventional wisdom says that black people who are married have more children, but Atlantic editor Ta-Nehisi Coates writes that statistics show the opposite. There is nothing “immoral” or “pathological” about deciding not to marry. In the glorious black past, women who made that decision were more — not less — likely to become mothers. People…

News of Nelson Mandela’s failing health has pointed a spotlight at the next generation of South Africans, writes Bolanle Omisore at Ebony, and they are not as politically involved as their forefathers. “I came back to South African in 1994, before Mandela’s election, and it was the beginning of liberalization,” says Mandlesizwe L. Isaacs, an…

Sparse rock chords, medium-sized rhymes and women as objects is how Yeezus sounds to Kris Ex, who reviewed Kanye West’s latest album in L.A. Weekly. He also notes West’s misogynist lyrics, despite becoming father to a baby girl, North West, with girlfriend Kim Kardashian, last weekend. The album is short, clocking in at 40 minutes,…

Join us here or on Twitter for a live discussion of the opening statements in the second-degree-murder trial of George Zimmerman, who is accused of murdering 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Use the hashtag #GZtrial to weigh in with your tweets. Columbus Ohio News, Weather Tweets about “#GZtrial” !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?’http’:’https’;if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+”://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,”script”,”twitter-wjs”); Corey Dade, an award-winning journalist based in…

While tennis star Serena Williams is busy apologizing for her comments around the Steubenville, Ohio, rape case, it seems she also targeted her old rival Maria Sharapova during a recent Rolling Stone interview. In response to Williams calling her boring, Sharapova released a few jabs of her own during a pre-Wimbledon press conference on Saturday, according to the…

Rena Price, a South Los Angeles woman whose arrest with her son, Marquette Frye, ignited the Watts Riots, has died. She was 97, according the Los Angeles Times. On August 11, 1965, Price went to check on Frye, who’d been pulled over by police on Avalon Boulevard in South Los Angeles, and a fight between…

Preparing for an upcoming exhibit at London’s Jewish Museum entitled Amy Winehouse: a Family Portrait, the late singer’s brother, Alex Winehouse, spoke to the Observer about what he feels ended his sister’s life. Alex has had time to reflect on what triggered Amy’s spiral into drink and drugs, but hasn’t come to any clear conclusion other…

It’s been a whirlwind of a week for former Food Network star Paula Deen, who recently admitted to using the n-word with ease. In a matter of days, she’s been publicly lambasted by black Twitter hashtags, fired from the Food Network and sparked a racial firestorm on the channel’s Facebook page. At Ebony, Jamilah Lemieux…