culture

(The Root) — I want Adria Richards to know that I support her. I want to use whatever platform I have — big or small — to shout down the disgusting sexist vitriol that exploded all over the Internet after Richards, a veteran of Silicon Valley, dared to use her own platform to do the…

The U.S. Supreme Court is already considering the highly charged Fisher v. University of Texas case, a challenge to the school’s use of race as a consideration in its admissions process, and now it’s taking on another affirmative action case: Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, the New York Times reports. The case concerns…

(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. By the mid-19th century, the fine arts were playing an important role in shaping the self-image of America. A…

(The Root) — This weekend, thanks to MTV’s marathons of retro seasons of The Real World, I accidentally time-warped back to 1992. Remember that year? George H.W. Bush lost the presidency to Bill Clinton, “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston set musical records and the City of Angels burned with the riots over…

(The Root) — When I was in my first semester of journalism school, a well-meaning professor pulled me aside to offer some constructive criticism. He was one of my favorites, a great teacher and an accomplished editor at an award-winning newspaper. He’d noticed a theme in the stories I’d pitched or written for his class…

Ebony‘s Alisha Tillery says your online life will be better if you avoid these annoying and offensive folks at all costs. 1) Ultimate Selfies: I wonder if I fall into this category sometimes until I see those people who fit the bill perfectly. It’s cool to post a few self-portraits to Instagram, Facebook or Twitter,…

Writing at the Huffington Post, Children’s Defense Fund President Marian Wright Edelman makes the case that it’s time to protect kids, not weapons. My friends are dead. I saw the bad man. He was next to me when we ran out.” “I played ball with him. Now he is dead.” “My friend got killed cause…

Writing at Essence, Nathan Hale Williams says he was “raised right,” but he can’t say the same for the men he encounters in his daily life.  When my mother walks up to a door in the presence of a man, she waits. It was the way I was trained to always open a door for…