culture
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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…
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A Festival for Foodies and Music Lovers
(The Root) — Corn. That’s one of my earliest and fondest memories of the Taste of Chicago, where you can buy big, juicy corn on cob on a stick and douse it with lemon pepper or any flavoring of your choice. You see, it reminds me of spending summers at my grandparents’ house in the…
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Harvard's 1st Black Dean Steps Down
Evelynn Hammonds, the first African-American and first female dean of Harvard College, has announced that she will step down from her post on July 1, AtlantaBlackStar.com reports. The news comes in the wake of a student-cheating scandal during which administrators searched the email accounts of resident deans for the source of leaks to the student…
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Could First Lady End Hollywood Colorism?
(The Root) — Recently I had the pleasure of moderating a conversation hosted by New York Women in Film and Television and the Fox Broadcasting Co. on the issue of diversity in Hollywood, particularly in terms of casting. The panel included some of the industry’s leaders on the subject, among them film executive Zola Mashariki,…
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TLC Creator Snubbed in Biopic?
According to an excerpt from the June 2013 issue of Sister 2 Sister magazine about the upcoming VH1 biopic Crazy, Sexy, Cool: The TLC Story, the group’s creator, Ian Burke, is feeling more sad than crazy, sexy or cool when it comes to the made-for-TV movie. Why? It pretty much leaves him out altogether. In exchange…
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Philadelphia's New Summer Tradition
(The Root) — Everyone knew that 2012’s Made in America Festival would be great. It was curated by rapper and business mogul JayZ, who promised to bring more than 30 of music’s best acts to Philadelphia during Labor Day weekend of 2012, the music festival’s inaugural year. Attendees were allowed to enter the highly guarded…
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AFRAM: Family Fun in a Changing City
(The Root) — My fondness for street fairs and cultural festivals goes back to my childhood growing up in Baltimore. The mix of people, food and arts and entertainment is an atmosphere I thrive on. Each summer my mother took me to every ethnic festival we could get to on public transportation, and one of…