culture
-
Beyoncé's 'Bow Down': A Pro-Woman Anthem?
(The Root) — Full disclosure: I’m a Beyoncé devotee. But I surely didn’t break my neck nodding furiously when I first heard her new hip-hopped, Houston-soaked song, “Bow Down/I Been On.” The track is just OK. I prefer my Bey full-voiced, belting love songs or pop anthems while moving in a manner that has little…
-
Watch This: 'What the F–k He Ain't … Did' Interrupts Mayor's Speech
We don’t think this is what they mean when they say all citizens should have a voice in politics. This morning, as Kansas City, Mo., Mayor Sly James delivered his State of the City address, an unidentified man stormed the stage, took over the podium and managed to say, “This man had just gotten through…
-
KKK in the Classroom: This Could Go Really Wrong or Really Right
The Washington Times reports that members of hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Westboro Baptist Church are being integrated into the lesson plans — and invited to the actual classrooms — of teachers around the country. No, these aren’t white-pride types, and it’s not backlash by those who think ethnic-studies programs could rip…
-
Race Didn't Actually Cost Abigail Fisher Her Spot at UT
Writing at ProPublica, Nikole Hannah-Jones explains what she says the Supreme Court affirmative action case is really about. … Publicly, Fisher and her supporters, chief among them the conservative activist who conceived of the case, have worked to make Fisher the symbol of racial victimization in modern America. As their narratives goes, she did everything…
-
Like 'Girls,' 'Lean In' Is Too Harshly Criticized for Leaving Black Women Out
Writing at Essence, Daniella Gibbs Léger says that Sheryl Sandberg shouldn’t be raked over the coals for telling her life story, even if we don’t see ourselves in it. By now you’ve seen, read or heard the back-and-forth over Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s new book Lean In, her tome on women and the workplace. The…
-
Confession: I'm Hiding My Interracial Relationship
Danielle T. Pointdujour writes at Ebony that she hopes her family can open their minds and share in her love, but if they can’t, that’s OK. … Since I wasn’t allowed to date until I was 16, I had a secret boyfriend in the months leading up to that milestone birthday. Mike was the best…
-
Tiger Dating: Should Black Women Care?
(The Root) — A couple of years ago, I turned down an interview opportunity with a major network for the first, but not last, time. The reason was the topic. The producer wanted to know if I, as a black woman, was willing to weigh in on the fact that the Tiger Woods scandal that…
-
Congo War Crimes Suspect Surrenders at US Embassy
Bosco Ntaganda, a Congolese warloard who’s accused of conscripting child soldiers, lived as an international fugitive for years. But yesterday he walked right into the U.S. Embassy in Rwanda and asked to be transferred to the International Criminal Court, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman said. The Associated Press reports that news of the surrender first…
-
Did Teen Killed by Homeowner Think He Was in His Own House?
Virginia teen Caleb Gordley was shot and killed by a neighbor Saturday night in what appears to have been a tragic combination of drinking, two identical houses and a homeowner with a loaded gun, the Washington Post reports. It seems the 16-year-old mistook a neighboring home for his own the night of his death, in…