culture

For Harriett blogger Kimberly N. Foster agrees with author Jamaica Kincaid’s rejection of the “angry black woman” label that critics try to stamp on her work, saying that it wouldn’t be an issue if she had “blond hair and blue eyes.” Jamaica Kincaid is one of the preeminent literary voices of our time. That’s why…

UPDATED Tuesday, May 7, 5:07 p.m. EDT: The Mississippi State Supreme Court has granted a stay of execution for death row inmate Willie Jerome Manning, according to the Jackson Free Press. He had been scheduled to be put to death today at 6 p.m. at Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman. Earlier: The state of Mississippi…

Prominent scholars such as Michelle Alexander, Charles Ogletree and Imani Perry are just a few of the big names who will appear alongside anti-racist author and educator Tim Wise in the film White Like Me. It will be an exploration of race and racism in the U.S. through the lens of whiteness and white privilege,…

TMZ has obtained a video of Kris Kross rapper Chris Kelly just hours before his untimely death. Recorded at his Atlanta home, it shows eerie footage of the artist trying to rap and spit rhymes about a room “full of dead bodies.” TMZ says the disturbing lyrics were part of a track he had been…

Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who amused the nation with his political gaffes during the presidential race, is at it again. While speaking on the Family Research Council’s Stand With Scouts Sunday program, he injected slavery into a discussion about the Boy Scouts’ ban on gays, The Advocate reports. He said that Americans must resist…

Cleveland resident Charles Ramsey is being hailed as a hero after his dramatic recounting of the rescue of two women in a kidnapping case that goes back 10 years, CNN reports. Videos of his interviews have gone viral because of his colorful storytelling ability and his accidental and not-so-subtle commentary about the state of race…

(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. A scene of suffering answered by charity takes place in a crude dwelling, engendering a moving tableau between the…

Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page highlights the problems with relying on a race-classification system created in a different era. A notable example of how Americans fall through the cracks in census data-gathering caught my eye recently. It appeared on the black-oriented TheRoot.com website under this intriguing headline: “I found one drop; can I be black…

Colorlines‘ Jamilah King presents a 1998 letter by Shakur, who was recently placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list. In her letter, Shakur provides her own account of the events leading up to her arrest and 1977 conviction. She also details the extent to which the media played a role in her prosecution. Shakur…