culture
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Meet America's Oldest World War II Veteran
America’s oldest living World War II veteran, Richard Overton, is 107 years old (and doesn’t look a day over 90), served in the South Pacific and enjoys up to 12 cigars a day and whiskey in his coffee. He’s clearly not one to be messed with, so we’re glad that Gov. Rick Perry decided to…
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Can Trayvon's Killer Win With Social Media?
(The Root) — Today I’m putting aside Washington politics to talk about political methods of another kind, in the upcoming second-degree-murder trial of Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman. Instead of voters, Zimmerman’s attorneys are trying to sway potential jurors, and the extraordinary campaign could well succeed. For the past year, the Zimmerman defense team has…
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Friends and Family Remember Malcolm Shabazz in New York
(The Root) — Family and friends gathered to remember Malcolm Shabazz at a memorial service at First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem on Thursday morning. Shabazz, the grandson of Malcolm X, died in Mexico on May 9 at the age of 28. Unconfirmed reports say that he was killed during a bar fight-cum-robbery. “We are…
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Kerry Washington Got Death Threats for Supporting Obama?
Maybe some Scandal fans thought Olivia Pope’s relationship with a Republican president on the ABC drama somehow informed Kerry Washington’s real-life political views. And apparently they were disappointed when she spoke in support of President Obama at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. The response? Death threats. (What else?) The actress described the ridiculous — and…
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Charles Ramsey Wannabe? Man Stages Kidnapping to Be Hero
Kyle Dube, a 20-year-old from Maine, created a fake Facebook account to lure a teenage girl out of her house and ultimately killed her, the Associated Press reports. His original motive for 15-year-old Nichole Cable’s kidnapping: He planned to “rescue” her and “be the hero.” In an affidavit released after Dube was indicted, Detective Thomas…
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I Want to Marry Her but She Drinks Too Much
(The Root) — “I’m in a relationship of almost two years with a woman I love. Recently she has become a heavy drinker. Her job is demanding and comes with high stress levels. Lately she’s been unusually stressed and has been drinking more often. It makes her aggressive and rude until she sobers up, and…
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Black Girls Have Bulimia, Too. I Should Know
In a personal essay at Ebony.com, Latria Graham delivers a reminder that eating disorders don’t belong to a specific race or shape. At nine, when my eating disorder started, I didn’t know what to call it. I knew the moment I’d stuck my fingers down my throat that I was doing something unnatural, and when…
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Loving Another Woman Helped Me Love Myself
Although we don’t all necessarily have to be bedfellows, talking honestly with other women (black, white, straight and gay alike) about our deepest uncertainties about self is pretty radical, writes Kimberley McLeod in a piece for xoJane. Loving another woman is a revolutionary act. I’d heard it before but didn’t quite grasp the gravity of…
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AfroPunk: The Other Black Experience
(The Root) — There’s something about Brooklyn in summer. The Fort Greene neighborhood was the first place in the Big Apple that I, a 22-year-old budding journalist from Northern California, really called home. There were artists, hipsters, hippies, hip-hoppers, neo-soulers and punks, and everyone was black. I’d never seen anything like that all rolled up…
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Learning the American Language of Racism
Originally from Kenya, Cornell English professor Mukoma Wa Ngugi, in a piece for Ebony.com, reflects on experiencing and discussing racial prejudice in the United States. … Having recently (at that point) come to the US from Kenya, where the majority is Black African, understanding racism was at first an intellectual exercise. Yes, I knew being…