culture
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The Most Influential Black Designer?
(The Root) — First lady Michelle Obama is credited with turning relatively unknown designers into superstars, the most famous being Jason Wu, who became a household name after she selected his dress to wear to her husband’s first inaugural ball. But she has also helped America rediscover superstars. In 2010 she wore a pantsuit by Stephen Burrows,…
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Zimmerman's Jury: What Will They See?
(The Root) — Meet the jury of George Zimmerman’s peers: no men and just one person who shares his Latino ethnicity. After nine days of painstaking screenings from a jury pool of 500, six women have been seated to hear the second-degree murder trial against Zimmerman, the neighborhood-watch volunteer who fatally shot unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon…
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Food Network: Paula Deen Is Out
One day you’re innocently fantasizing out loud about re-creating slavery, and the next you’re just longing for the days before you had to make awkward, forced-looking, clenched-fist apology videos — and before you lost your job. That seems to be Paula Deen’s story this week. Apparently the racist remarks she admitted making — unique not…
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15-Year-Old Among 7 Shot in Chicago
Since yesterday afternoon, at least seven people have been wounded by gun violence in Chicago, the Chicago Tribune reports. They included a 15-year-old boy who was hit in the arm and ankle by shots fired from a car, and a 17-year-old girl shot in the chest and back. Another teen was wounded in the Park…
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Meet '30 Leaders in the Fight for Black Men'
The Daily Beast has presented a list of “30 Leaders in the Fight for Black Men,” pulled together by President Obama’s former spiritual adviser (and The Root 100 honoree) Joshua DuBois. They include politicians, activists, writers and athletes — from the NAACP’s Ben Jealous to The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Miami Heat’s Dwyane Wade.…
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Deen's Racism: More Than a Twitter Joke
(The Root) — So it turns out that Paula Deen — who, with her buttery Southern charm, cozied up to us by way of the tube — was really just a bigot who could burn. Deen went hard. After being slapped with a lawsuit charging racism, she acknowledged in a deposition that she “of course”…
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Crazy Talk: Ohio School Bans Afro Puffs and Braids?
Hopefully this isn’t true. It’s being reported today that a school in Ohio has banned, well, just about 75 percent of reasonable hairstyles for school-age African-American girls with natural hair. No “Afro puffs” (the style that results when your hair isn’t straight and you pull it back) and no “small twisted braids.” If this really…
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A Slave's Legacy Lives On in World War II
The following is an excerpt from Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation, a book about an 18th-century slave, Rosalie, and her amazing descendants. The coronation of George VI as king of England provided the ostensible motive for the Associated Negro Press to send the journalist Fay M. Jackson from Los Angeles…
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Sneaky Practices That Cheat Fast-Food Workers
At Colorlines, Seth Freed Wessler uncovers illegal employment practices at many fast-food restaurants, and the underpaid workers who suffer the consequences. The U.S. Department of Labor found a couple years ago that 40 percent of fast food outposts in the country fail to consistently pay their employees a minimum wage or overtime. And a recent study from New York…