culture

(The Root) — There must be something in the water, because major figures in hip-hop are revolutionizing the way we consume media — during Black Music Month, no less. On the heels of Jay-Z’s partnership with Samsung to release his new album, Magna Carta Holy Grail, to 1 million users three days before the actual…

Afro-Cuban activists Calvo Cárdenas and Manuel Cuesta Morúa created the Citizens Committee for Racial Integration (CIR) to advocate for Cuba’s underrepresented Afro-Cuban population. CIR champions policies to fight discrimination that Afro-Cubans experience in the workforce. The group’s work gives Cuba’s Communist Party pause because it refutes the idea that 50 years of communism has eliminated…

Alisha Tillery speaks out against the tendency to compare black people to white icons in a piece for Clutch magazine. She says that it gives the impression we aren’t satisfied being ourselves and that we look to white people for the standard of what’s good. A couple of weeks ago, I came across a story…

At xoJane, Helena Andrews, a contributing editor at The Root, rejects the idea that an absent father makes for a promiscuous daughter. She disagrees with a Texas Christian University study that came to that controversial conclusion. Obviously the study and research and so forth are all sort of bogus, as most of the smart women who analyzed…

The Root Contributing Editor Farai Chideya, in a piece for the Huffington Post, calls single black mothers Tiger Moms and applauds them for overcoming challenges to raise strong black men and women . I’m not a great satirist, and what my family achieved is too serious to get that tonality wrong. My father and mother split…

(The Root) — “My ex used to go through my phone when I would leave the room, and it would piss me off. He never found anything because I was being faithful to him. I decided to put a lock on my phone because I felt disrespected, now he’s pissed. What do I do now?”…

According to an article in the Huffington Post, a Rolling Stone magazine cover story on Serena Williams compares her figure to that of a monster truck. “Sharapova is tall, white and blond, and, because of that, makes more money in endorsements than Serena, who is black, beautiful and built like one of those monster trucks…

Frederick Douglass will be officially remembered on Capitol Hill, the Associated Press reports. On Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner led the unveiling ceremony of a 7-foot bronze statue of the former slave in the U.S. Capitol’s Emancipation Hall. Steve Weitzman, a Maryland artist, created the statue, which portrays Douglass in his 50s. The statue joins…