culture

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…

In a piece for Ebony, Josie Pickens takes on the “relationship expert”-backed theory that we don’t truly desire and pursue platonic friendships that don’t lead to romance. I couldn’t agree more with Jamilah Lemieux’s argument against the growing number of male “relationship experts” and “romance coaches” who gear their services toward single Black women who are really,…

(The Root) — Last week, OWN announced that Bill Duke’s controversial documentary Dark Girls, which explores the colorism faced by dark-skinned women, would be heading to the network in June. I refer to it as controversial not because of the very important issue it tackles, but because I recall the discussions that the 10-minute trailer…