culture

(The Root) — I’m still not entirely sure what to make of “You Can Touch My Hair,” an interactive public art exhibit put together by Un’ruly, which actually encouraged people to touch the hair of black women and ask questions about it. Basically, three black women with fabulous hair — a poofy ‘fro, long locks…

Writing for the Huffington Post, New York Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel encourages folks to simmer down about the national-security scandals plaguing Attorney General Eric Holder’s administration at the Department of Justice. He suspects that much of the furor has to do with political theater and the Republican Party’s attempts to get one up on the…

Michael Arceneaux, in a piece for Ebony, describes how, contrary to popular belief, not all gay people are rich white men living the good life. He uses findings from a report issued by the Williams Institute to draw attention to the nonwhite members of the gay community and the economic constraints they face. Their plight…

The new documentary A Broken Promise in Texas: Race, the Death Penalty and the Duane Buck Case, released by the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, sheds light on the 1997 Texas death-penalty trial of Duane Buck, an African-American man who was convicted of shooting three people, two of whom died. The controversy: Jurors listened…

(The Root) — This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black in Western Art Archive at Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. In 1636 Count Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen was appointed governor-general of New Holland, a…

Aja Brown, 31, was just named the mayor of Compton, Calif., in a special runoff election on Tuesday, June 4. The Los Angeles Times reports that Brown, an African-American urban planner and graduate of the University of South Carolina, was up against Omar Bradley, a former two-term mayor and leading political figure in Compton. Analysts…