culture
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Bet You Don't Know What Drowning Looks Like
According to a Slate piece that’s making the rounds this week, you probably don’t know what drowning looks like. Why? Well, because when it actually happens, it doesn’t resemble what just about anyone would think of as drowning. “There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind,”…
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Trayvon's Mom: I Will Have to Forgive Zimmerman
In an interview with the New York Times‘ Charles M. Blow that led the columnist to characterize her as “a tower of grace and a well of good will, a woman who misses her son desperately and is trying to make the best of an awful situation, the kind who perseveres through faith and is…
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Blacks and Hispanics 'Predisposed' to Crime: Really, Judge?
Edith Jones, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in Texas, is the target of an ethics complaint by civil rights groups who claim that she said in a speech at the University of Pennsylvania Law School that “racial groups like African Americans and Hispanics are predisposed to crime,” MSNBC…
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Could Stop and Frisk Become Permanent?
(The Root) — While stop and frisk, the controversial practice of the New York City Police Department that has been proved to disproportionately target young black and Latino males, faces a serious court challenge, a new state law may render a court ruling to end the practice moot. The New York Senate has passed a…
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Surprised About Black Twitter or Online Racism? You're Late
Noting the shock over racist reactions to the interracial Cheerios commercial, Ebony‘s Jamilah Lemieux says it seems as if “the Internet just met the Internet” in recent weeks. I’m not saying people shouldn’t take issue with the racist responses to what was a cute commercial for cereal; it’s certainly unfortunate that something so innocuous brings…
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Jada Pinkett Smith Defends Beyoncé
Writing at Clutch magazine, Evette Dionne points out that the actress is standing in solidarity with her “unfairly criticized” peer Beyoncé against her body-shaming critics. Racist feminists are again critiquing Beyonce Knowles-Carter. Their latest argument is the 31-year-old’s wardrobe choices were inappropriate for the “Chime for Change,” a concert designed to raise funds to combat…
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Michelle Obama's Transcendent Moment
(The Root) — If it’s been true in past elections that what the average Joe Voter really wants is to share a beer with the president, then perhaps getting into a bar fight with the first lady will be 2016’s litmus test. As it stands, reaction to first lady Michelle Obama’s swift handling of a…
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Bye-Bye to Michele Bachmann's Twitter-Era Politics
Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page says goodbye and good riddance to the conservative Minnesota politician and her tactics. Rep. Michele Bachmann got it backwards in her surprising retirement announcement. Many of her “mainstream liberal media” critics will miss her, especially the fact-checkers. “I fully anticipate,” the Minnesota Republican declared in an eight-minute, 40-second, video, “the…
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Americans Can't Agree on How to Say Anything: These Maps Prove It
Joshua Katz, a Ph.D. student in statistics at North Carolina State University, has published a group of maps illustrating a linguistic survey of how Americans in different regions pronounce words (and, sometimes, differences in the actual words we use). There’s the expected “pop”-versus-“soda” divide and big regional variations in words like “caramel,” “been” and “pajamas.”…
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Multimillion-Dollar Mau Mau Settlement?
Decades after they suffered castration, rape and beating during a crackdown by British forces in Kenya, thousands of fighters from the Mau Mau movement who were tortured during the Kenyan “emergency” of 1952-1960 will finally be compensated, the Mail Online reports. Britain’s foreign office declined to comment on reports that the settlement — expected to…