culture
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2nd Suspect Arrested in New Orleans Shooting
Updated Friday, May 17, 9:05 a.m. EDT: After Akein Scott, 19, was arrested Wednesday night, his brother Shawn Scott, 24, was arrested on Thursday, the Los Angeles Times reports. Four other people have been arrested for allegedly harboring the fugitives during an intense manhunt, officials said Thursday. Earlier: The Associated Press is reporting that 19-year-old Akein Scott, the…
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Graffiti Terrorizes Black High School Students
It’s one thing (a disturbing and far-too-common thing) when students get the bright idea to use racial slurs in graffiti, revealing troubling attitudes and creating a hostile environment for everyone. It’s something else altogether when the people who deface property actually make a hit list of African-American students who should be the “first to die.”…
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We Should Pay Attention to How the LGBT Community Gets Things Done
Writing at the Huffington Post, Gil Robertson says that African Americans should pay close attention to this example of how to manage a group agenda. Of course the LGBT community’s campaign to push forward its mandate could not have been achieved without the example put forth by African Americans to achieve Civil Rights over half…
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She's 'Androgynous'? Zoe Saldana Needs a Dictionary
Clutch magazine‘s Yesha Callahan is perplexed about some of the actress’s recent commentary. Then there’s her abuse of the word “androgyny” when she speaks about possibly being able to fall in love with a woman, marry one and raise a family. In the magazine, Saldana, 34, describes herself as “androgynous.” She says she may “end…
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19 Things Every HBCU Grad Knows
(The Root) — We often either romanticize HBCUs or disparage them. But as all graduates of historically black schools know, the truth lies somewhere in between. If you want to see what’s hot on black Twitter, check out The Chatterati.Akoto Ofori-Atta is the editor of The Grapevine. Like her Facebook page and follow her on…
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IRS Scandal Is News, but Tax-Exempt Status Was Never Politically Neutral
In a piece for Colorlines, Brentin Mock places the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of Tea Party groups in historical context. It’s interesting to note how non-profits became forbidden from political campaign activity to begin with. For that, look back to Lyndon B. Johnson, the U.S. President who helped usher in the Voting Rights Act and…
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Shots Not Heard Round the World in NOLA
(The Root) — On Mother’s Day, someone decided to shoot into a crowd of parading New Orleanians, injuring 19 people. Video footage of the event indicates that I was just feet away from the shooter. My family and friends think I should stop going to second-line parades or into “bad neighborhoods” (read: black neighborhoods, of…
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The World's Most and Least Racist Countries
We’d say that answering “people of a different race” to a question about the type of people you would not want as neighbors is a good-enough measure of intolerance. And that’s the World Values Survey question the Washington Post‘s Max Fischer used to create a color-coded global map of racial attitudes across the globe. Check…
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Charles Ramsey Tattoo and Action Figure
Looks like Charles Ramsey, the Cleveland man made famous for rescuing three kidnapped women, will be remembered through more than just news interviews and their resulting memes. Apparently at least one person has memorialized him with a tattoo (wow, we wouldn’t even expect the people he saved from a life of captivity to do that).…
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Teen Won't Be Charged for Science Experiment Gone Bad
When 16-year-old Kiera Wilmot was arrested for causing a small explosion on the campus of her Florida high school in what some called a “science experiment gone bad,” the possible felony charges and up to five years in prison that she faced became a national story. Now, after a crowdfunded legal defense fund raised more…