Source: Found Image Holdings Inc / Getty The narrative that health officials have provided to the public is based on the notion that the coronavirus does not discriminate against its victims, infecting their respiratory systems at large with a reckless abandon that only seems to be getting more random. But in Milwaukee County, home to […]
Read More
OAKLAND, Calif. — In a few hours, Stephen Bruner, the singer and bassist professionally known as Thundercat, had a sold-out show to play at the Fox Theater, a former 1920s movie palace on Telegraph Avenue. Somewhere inside the Fox, there was a dressing room with his name on it. But Bruner’s plan for the afternoon […]
Read More
SAN FRANCISCO — With an iPhone, you can dictate a text message. Put Amazon’s Alexa on your coffee table, and you can request a song from across the room. But these devices may understand some voices better than others. Speech recognition systems from five of the world’s biggest tech companies — Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM […]
Read More
WASHINGTON — In a series of decisions, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that states may abolish a common form of the insanity defense, that an entrepreneur suing Comcast for race discrimination must meet a demanding standard and that states are immune from claims of copyright infringement. In their latest response to the coronavirus, the […]
Read More
The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has planned a town hall event via telephone to bring attention to the coronavirus‘ disproportionate impact on Black communities in the U.S. Other Black leaders were expected to join members from the influential bloc of African Americans in Congress and the U.S. Senate during the Telephone Town Hall, which is […]
Read More
Last year, the news that only a tiny number of black students gained admission into New York City’s most selective public high school, Stuyvesant, touched off a maelstrom about race and merit in the nation’s largest school system. On Thursday, education officials announced that, one year later, almost nothing had changed: Ten black students got […]
Read More
Source: WENN/Cover / WENN The coronavirus pandemic has changed life for everybody around the world in what seems like an overnight shift from normalcy to heightened urgency. But in America, where the COVID-19 disease is spreading exponentially, Black people were bracing for consequences from the respiratory illness that has already affected them in myriad ways […]
Read More
I grew up in Southern California neighborhoods that were overwhelmingly white — white schools, white teachers, white curriculum. I remember visiting the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where a cast of Auguste Rodin’s monumental sculpture of Balzac towered over me. My friends and I immersed ourselves in the works of white authors, and I […]
Read More
ATLANTA — On a torrentially rainy night last month, some 200 members of the theatrical community here gathered in an arty underground event space for what was billed as the Atlanta Theater Dinner. It was not an awards ceremony or a gala fund-raiser. The meal was potluck and the entertainment unusual: a bare-bones, script-in-hand reading […]
Read More
It wasn’t long before racists’ true colors began to seep out in the midst of the rapid spreading of the coronavirus as people rush to their local supermarkets to obtain necessities in preparation for government suggested quarantines and social distancing. Three Black women in Pittsburgh, California took heed to the precautionary measures that have been […]
Read More
Is the modern Republican Party built on race prejudice, otherwise known as racism? Has it become, as Stuart Stevens — a media consultant with an exceptionally high win-loss record who was a lead strategist for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 — puts it, the “white grievance party”? Stevens has impeccable Republican credentials. In […]
Read More
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The two men were strangers and stood steps from the courthouse that had once sent them both to prison. Julius Irving spoke first. He said he had come to register potential voters. Florida had recently overturned a lifetime ban on voting for most people who had been convicted of felonies and were […]
Read More
The story about Bernie Sanders is that he can’t win black voters. That first emerged when he lost the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and was reinforced by Joe Biden’s decisive sweep of Southern primaries. This has led to reflexive assumptions about the political sympathies of African-Americans, assumptions that fail to consider the entire political […]
Read More
The church, the actual building that houses black bodies and souls, stands at the center of black life and culture. It is a fact hiding in plain sight that one of the first cooperative economic ventures former slaves undertook was the purchase and maintenance of churches. Without the cooperation of the church, many black colleges, […]
Read More
Source: Chip Somodevilla / Getty With the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) reaching pandemic proportions, the racial justice organization Color of Change has released a statement highlighting the disparities Black people face when dealing with the virus. The president of Color Of Change, Rashad Robinson, explained: “This pandemic reveals a terrifying reality — many Americans don’t […]
Read More
When Harry Belafonte turned 93 on March 1, he celebrated with a tribute at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, which ended with a thunderous audience singalong to a riff on his star-making 1956 hit, “The Banana Boat Song,” complete with the rapper Doug E. Fresh beatboxing over its famous “Day-O!” refrain. It was a fitting […]
Read More
AMSTERDAM — Rembrandt’s 1661 painting, “Two African Men,” is one of the Dutch old master’s more inscrutable works. One man, dressed in a Roman-style costume and shawl, seems to be giving a speech, while another man leans attentively over his shoulder. The canvas was painted with a thin layers of earth tones and looks unfinished, […]
Read More
Late Thursday night, I appeared on TV. On Friday morning, I woke up to a text message from a friend. “People on Twitter are pathetic,” she wrote. “How are you?” On MSNBC’s “The 11th Hour With Brian Williams” the night before, we mentioned a tweet, written by someone else, about the enormous amount of money […]
Read More
Barbara Neely, an unheralded social activist who in her 50s became an award-winning writer of mystery novels centered on a savvy black maid who doubles as an amateur detective, died on March 2 in Philadelphia. She was 78. Ms. Neely’s family announced her death through her publisher, Brash Books, without providing further details, except to […]
Read More
Four years ago, in Grant County, Oklahoma, Bernie Sanders crushed Hillary Clinton, 57.1 percent to 31.9 percent. This year, Sanders didn’t just lose Grant County — 87.5 percent white, 76.9 percent without college degrees — to Joe Biden, his percentage of the vote fell by 41 points, to 16.1 percent. Grant County reflects what has […]
Read More
Derrick Middleton was walking the streets of Harlem in search of a haircut when he was invited into a shop by a barber. He sat in a chair, and the barber covered him in a white protective cape. Mr. Middleton began to describe in precise detail what kind of cut he wanted, but was interrupted. […]
Read More
Source: Smith Collection/Gado / Getty The exponential spread of the coronavirus across the globe has left many of the world’s citizens shaken to their cores as health officials work to figure out a solution to the hyper-contagious illness that is also known as COVID-19. MORE: Coronavirus And HBCUs: How Black Colleges Are Reacting To COVID-19 […]
Read More
WASHINGTON — The Russian government has stepped up efforts to inflame racial tensions in the United States as part of its bid to influence November’s presidential election, including trying to incite violence by white supremacist groups and to stoke anger among African-Americans, according to seven American officials briefed on recent intelligence. Russia’s lead intelligence agency, […]
Read More