Tag Archives: racism

In Billy Crystal’s musical medley that opened the 1992 Oscars, he sang a tribute to Barbra Streisand’s romantic drama The Prince of Tides to the tune of “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” the song made famous, of course, by Barbra Streisand. He crooned: “Seven nominations on the shelf, did this …

The double standard is almost as old as hip-hop itself. A decorated filmmaker gets laurels for his or her latest bullet-laden gangster movie. A rock or country star is proclaimed a songwriting genius for violent tales of man’s inhumanity to man. But rappers are held to a different standard, their …

It is a truth universally acknowledged (or at least it should be by now) that America is a country founded upon — as well as cursed, colonized, and fertilized by — a bedrock of racism that continues to this day. Should you be unable to wrap your head around that …

Former South Carolina Governor and current presidential candidate Nikki Haley insisted on Tuesday that America has “never been a racist country,” before claiming she had experienced racism in her own life. Speaking to Fox News the morning after her third-place finish in the Iowa caucus, Haley was asked if she …

Taraji P. Henson is no stranger to hustle. Throughout college, she spent most post-class evenings singing, dancing, and waiting tables on a D.C. cruise ship and her early mornings as a receptionist at The Pentagon to help cover her Howard University tuition. Henson still wears many hats as the owner …

F or Chaka Khan, the end of 2023 was nothing short of triumphant. In November, she was finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and she also moved from Los Angeles to a big, rural property in Georgia, where she says she’s found “peace of mind.” The …

Cord Jefferson wants to tell a quick story. It involves something that happened to a friend of his, although the writer-director of American Fiction is quick to point out that the incident in question could have easily happened to any number of Black creatives he knows, or for that matter, …

Thelonious “Monk” Ellison has hit his breaking point. The students in his Southern-lit class at the prestigious university he teaches at are oversensitive snowflakes. His superiors think he needs a break from academia. Monk’s novels may still be in print, but you wouldn’t know it; they’ve all been relegated to …

The 1963 March on Washington did not merely come together on its own via a whim, a wish, and good will. It took years of strategizing, planning, building coalitions, dodging bureaucratic obstacles and opponents both within and outside the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Students and veteran activists worked phone lines, …

Bass Reeves has one hell of a story. Born into slavery in Arkansas, he was forced by his owner to fight on the Confederate side of the Civil War. He escaped — legend has it, he beat up his owner over a card game and ran off — and lived …