Very Smart Brothas
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Dear Vogue: A Big Booty Is Not A Fashion Trend
Let me get this out first: WE CAN’T HAVE SHIT. *woosahs and le sighs* Patricia Garcia, Vogue writer, hipped me to something new in her essay, “We’re Officially in the Era of the Big Booty.” First, let’s start with the title. We’re “officially” embracing big butts, huh? Says who? Fashion designers? Pop culture experts? Mark…
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The Blackest Thing We've Seen This Week
Why this Kool-Aid ad featuring Malcolm Jamal-Warner, brought to our attention by Tonja Stidhum, is the Blackest thing we’ve seen all week. 1. There is no single food Blacker than the Kool-Aid packet. Not greens, not chitlins, not salt, not nothing. Imagine Cornell West playing dominoes at Rucker Park in Harlem. That’s how Black the…
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Why Roger Goodell Is Not Getting Fired Any Time Soon
I play basketball every Thursday night. It’s a weekly game that has apparently been going on for decades. A group of 15 to 20 guys — varying in age and skill level — meet at Central Catholic high school, play for a couple hours, and drink beer afterwards. For someone like me, who still has…
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Cinema Bun Podcast Episode 12 featuring Panama Jackson – Baby Boy
For their latest episode of the Cinema Bun Podast, the podcast hosted by Berook (@ethiopianboy) and Tonja (@embracethej) where they discuss movie news and conduct movie reviews, they enlisted the “expertise” in Black movie-dom, VSB’s own Panama Jackson, to talk about what is possibly the greatest movie of all time, Baby Boy. While that statement…
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Leaked: More Danny Ferry NBA Scouting Reports
The odd circumstances leading to Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson selling his interest in the team apparently stem from racially insensitive comments made by general manager Danny Ferry during a conference call in June, an act that led to the internal investigation of the Hawks and Levenson self-reporting his own racially tinged comments. What exactly…
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Defending Ray Rice Is Just The Same As Defending George Zimmerman
***Damon’s latest for Ebony on the similarities between Ray Rice defenders and the people defending George Zimmerman and Darren Wilson*** For (many) Black people, this is the most maddening and exasperating part of racism. Not the actual racism. But the denial that the actual racism exists. Knowing this, and how frustrated so many of us are by…
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#ThatSo90s: Jodeci – Stay
There is no conversation about 90s r&b without Jodeci. Sure Boyz II Men had the great ballads and what not and henceforth, but nobody gives a shit about Boyz II Men in 2014. Jodeci, however, still reigns supreme as the blueprint for most male bad boy groups. Sure they sang songs you could play at…
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Four Questions After Watching The Ray Rice Video
[Admin Note: Around 230pm EST, it was reported that the Baltimore Ravens have cut Ray Rice from the football team.] I never played double-dutch as a kid, but I have always likened the playground game to mixing it up with my followers and those I follow on Twitter. It’s challenging, especially because as great of a…
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Exactly How Racist Was Atlanta Hawks Owner Bruce Levenson's Email?
It was quite a weekend in sports. Serena won again, the NFL proved (again) that we’re all hypocrites, and Steph Curry decided to go all Steph Curry against Mexico. He must be racist. For me, though, the most interesting sports-related item was the news that Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson would be selling his share…
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Ray Rice And The "Well, Actually…" People
There are few internet people less liked than the “Well, actually…” person. You know who they are. Some story breaks with someone doing or saying something shitty, and the maddeningly contrarian “Well, actually…” person starts their spiel, which is usually some combination of myopic condescension shrouded in faux objectivity. “Well, actually we don’t know all…