culture
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'Scandal,' Black Women and the Super-Black Mammy-Jezebel
Writing at the Shadow League, Megan Livingston explains why Olivia Pope is a game changer and an everywoman. I do not nor did I ever, care who the mole was, at least not much. I was even a little fuzzy on why it mattered, in part because the act of watching Shonda Rhimes’ newest creation,…
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What Black High School Grads Need to Hear
(The Root) — During a graduation speech this month at Martin Luther King Jr. Academic Magnet High School in Nashville, Tenn., Michelle Obama told students, “When something doesn’t go your way, you’ve just got to adjust. You’ve got to dig deep and work like crazy, and that’s when you’ll find out what you’re really made…
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10 Pieces of Advice for Postcollege Life
(The Root) — It’s commencement season! Over the weekend, President Obama headed to Morehouse College to deliver what turned out to be a controversial address, while first lady Michelle Obama went to Maryland’s Bowie State University to deliver a widely lauded speech. Scandal actress Kerry Washington spoke at her alma mater, George Washington University, where…
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How the Obama Administration Talks to Black America
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that this White House has one way of addressing the social ills of black people — and particularly black youths — and another way of addressing everyone else, writes Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic. No president has ever been better read on the intersection of racism and American history…
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Celebrating Race in the Renaissance
(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. Among the panoply of images displayed by the courtly circles of Renaissance Europe, a…
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Enough of Nice-Nasty Christianity
Christians should stop wielding religion as a tool of oppression, write Evette Dionne at Clutch magazine. “The Fighting Temptations” is one of the funniest, tongue-in-cheek depictions of the Pentecostal Baptist church … Though Paulina is a caricature, my then 14-year-old brain couldn’t comprehend how any Christian could be so devious and conniving. Paulina was the…
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Wole Soyinka: Push for Nobel Prize for Achebe Is 'Obscene'
Some in the literary world are pushing for the late Chinua Achebe to be awarded a posthumous Nobel Prize for literature, and fellow Nigerian author Wole Soyinka has had enough, The Guardian reports. He says the calls have “gone beyond ‘sickening’ ” and become “obscene and irreverent.” To be clear, it’s not that Soyinka —…
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Justin Fairfax Gets Wash. Post Endorsement for Va. Attorney General
Justin Fairfax, a former federal prosecutor who’s seeking the Democratic nomination for Virginia attorney general, has earned the endorsement of the Washington Post in his race against Mark R. Herring. The 34-year-old Fairfax, a Washington, D.C., native and graduate of Duke University and Columbia Law School, is one to watch. Here’s why the Post is…
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South African Whites Question Their Future
In South Africa, apartheid has been over for two decades. So it’s really no surprise that being white in the country feels different now from the way it did under the forced system of harsh, institutionalized racial segregation that curtailed the rights of black residents in favor or the ruling Afrikaaner population. As the BBC‘s…
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Va. Lt. Gov Candidate's Questionable Views
Minister and lawyer E.W. Jackson won the GOP nomination for Virginia lieutenant governor on Saturday. The development has inspired some to take a new look at his strong — and, some would say, outrageous — views on everything from President Obama’s “Muslim sensibilities” to a KKK-and-Planned Parenthood comparison. New York Magazine’s Adam Martin rounded up…