culture
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GOP Senator Conflates Immigration Reform and Boston Attacks
Colorlines‘ Seth Freed Wessler weighs in on the latest troubling comments from Republican Sen. Charles Grassley that confuse the two issues. As news from Boston continues to break, the Senate Judiciary Committee moved ahead this morning with a hearing on the comprehensive immigration reform bill introduced earlier in the week. As I noted after the…
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Watch This: Boston Suspect's Friends Speak Out
In a video from the New York Times, two young men who went to school with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev discuss their memories of the 19-year-old Boston Marathon bombing suspect who is still on the loose, after his 26-year-old brother was killed. “When the FBI released the photos, I was like, ‘Yeah, that looks like my friend…
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Boy Scouts Propose Lift of Ban on Gay Youths but Not on Leaders
The Boy Scouts of America will submit a proposal to its members to lift the ban on gay youth members, but the organization will continue to exclude gay people as leaders, the Associated Press reports. The week of May 20, 1,400 voting members of its National Council will have a chance to weigh in on…
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Boston Attacks: Who Are the Suspects?
UPDATED Friday, April 19: As the story of the attacks on Boston rapidly develops, Americans continue to sort through reports about the identities, descriptions and motivations of the suspects — sometimes with better results than others. (A report that one was interested in hip-hop? Not helpful.) It’s not the most urgent conversation taking place right…
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Describing a Suspect: A Few Tips for Mr. King
(The Root) — The federal authorities and Boston police put out the word early after the bombings at Monday’s Boston Marathon: Bring us your implausible, your unlikely, your huddled hunches yearning to be heard. Advance and be recognized. “We are processing all the digital photographic evidence we can,” said Richard DesLauriers, special agent in charge…
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Why White Critics' Fear of Engaging Tyler Perry Is Stifling Debate
They’ve offered analyses that, while largely negative, skip across the surface and ignore the depth, Joshua Alston argues in a piece for A.V. Club. At the end of March, Temptation: Confessions Of A Marriage Counselor hit theaters, bringing the number of films written and directed by Tyler Perry to 13 in just over seven years.…
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Jada, Will and the Open Marriage?
(The Root) — Professor Jada Pinkett Smith is back in the building, and class is in session. Continuing her online university-esque lecture series disguised as Facebook posts on everything from haters and bullying to goddess energy and last-resort lesbianism, Pinkett Smith recently sort of addressed the persistent rumors of her alleged open marriage to fellow…
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Gun Violence: What Do We Tell Our Children?
The Rev. Al Sharpton writes in a piece for the Huffington Post that it’s up to each and every one of us to show more courage than the 46 political cowards in the U.S. Senate. Almost every single day, someone walks into one of National Action Network’s (NAN) offices around the country consumed with the…
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Black Male Teachers: Becoming Extinct?
(The Root) — Many media sources have propagated the view that black male teachers are “becoming extinct.” Currently, black males represent less than 2 percent of the nation’s teacher workforce. One article suggests that black males are underrepresented in the teaching profession because they prefer to pursue more lucrative careers. The article also postulated that…
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Whoopings Ain't Working, Y'all
Essence‘s Janelle Harris makes the case that corporal punishment that leaves welts and open sores is going to exacerbate the problems that exist and create some new ones, too. … Black folks believe in spankings. It’s a cultural norm, accented with funny anecdotes about picking your own switches and being mollywhopped with mama’s backhand from hell.…