culture
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Does It Matter If He Calls Me His Girlfriend?
(The Root) — “I read something about a woman who was dating a guy for six months and he didn’t introduce her when they ran into people. It got me thinking — does it matter if your boyfriend introduces you like ‘This is Gina’ instead of saying, ‘This is my girlfriend, Gina’? Does saying ‘girlfriend’…
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An Open Letter to Charles Ramsey
Before the domestic violence reports surfaced, Eris Zion Venia Dyson analyzed the now-fallen Internet star’s racial insights in a piece at the For Harriet blog. In plain speak, you said something so profound, and I want to unpack the statement that you made: “When a young, pretty white woman runs into the arms of a…
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Student-Loan Debt: Time to Get Serious
Writing at the Huffington Post, Rep. Karen Bass makes the case for a comprehensive fix to the student-loan debt crisis. For one thing, student-loan interest rates will double on July 1 from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. If I’ve heard it once I’ve heard it a thousand times from my Republican colleagues: we have to…
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The Curious Case of the Black Viral Star
(The Root) — We knew it was coming. The formula is practically scientific: Disaster strikes; poor black person foils it (preferably in a roller set) or escapes, then gives a live interview jam-packed with ridiculous quotes that even Beyoncé can’t resist; the Internet memes flood Facebook; and the fame countdown starts at minute 15. So…
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Report: Charles Ramsey Repeat Domestic Abuser
Charles Ramsey, the Cleveland man-turned-Internet sensation who’s been called a hero for his role in helping to free three women held captive for years, has now been assigned a new description: “Repeat domestic abuser.” The Smoking Gun is reporting that he served prison time for battering his wife on more than one occasion: Ramsey’s first…
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Do Whites Have a Mental-Health Edge?
(The Root) — Lisa Nicole Carson, the former star of Ally McBeal and Jason’s Lyric, seemed poised to address rumors swirling about her alleged battles with mental illness during her mysterious, decade-long absence from Hollywood. When asked directly by Essence Magazine in 2009 about rumors that she battled either bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, she replied,…
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The Onion on Chris Beating Rihanna: Offensive or Funny?
Here’s an excerpt from a story The Onion published with the headline “Heartbroken Chris Brown Always Thought Rihanna Was Woman He’d Beat to Death.” After revealing yesterday that he had recently split up with longtime girlfriend Rihanna, a heartbroken Chris Brown tearfully told reporters that he always thought the 25-year-old singer was going to be…
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Black Folks, We Better Get Moving
(The Root) — Last week I moderated a panel on 3-D printing at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference, where two CEOs offered insights into this technology that has the potential to disrupt gun safety, manufacturing and possibly the geopolitical relationships between countries. On another panel, a 16-year-old winner of the Intel Science Fair Grand Prize…
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Can We Raise Colorblind Children?
Arguing that the rapper Eve has been blinded to reality by the veneer of money and celebrity, MyBrownBaby blogger Denene Millner hip-checks the star, who says that she wants to raise colorblind children. Now I love Eve, the pitbull in a skirt-turned-“it” girl on the Hollywood scene, and her relationship with British entrepreneur and race…