culture
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When Terror Hits Home
(The Root) — Boston is a diverse, complicated and rugged city. As a transplant to Boston from Los Angeles, I will say honestly that one does not easily or quickly warm to this city and its ways. Boston makes you want and earn membership. Los Angeles will always be home for me with everything that…
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I Didn't Give Up on Black Men; They Gave Up on Me
Jai Stone explains at Essence how a long history of rejection led her to have a “come-to-Jesus meeting” with herself on this controversial issue. I’m going to start with an urgent gripe of mine: Every time I turn around, the mating habits of African-American women are being scrutinized. There is always some broken-down bundle of…
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Lessons: Boston and the Human Spirit
At the Huffington Post, Binta Niambi Brown shares excerpts from her correspondence to friends this week that reveal reasons to rejoice in humanity’s endurance. Some have said this week that we are forever changed — that Boston will never be the same again. Others have countered that saying, we will recover, that we are not…
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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…