By Guest Contributor Dumi R. L’Heureux Lewis, originally published at Uptown Notes
So for the past few years I’ve been jousting with my family and loved ones around the issue of same sex marriage and repeatedly found my argument falling on deaf ears. In fact what I most often heard was, “I am for gay rights [...]

By Guest Contributor jbrotherlove, originally published at jbrotherlove

In case you missed it, CNN aired Black Men in the Age of President Obama this weekend. The special was hosted by Don Lemon who I’ve applauded in the past for his insightful coverage and inclusion of social media in his journalism.
Black Men showed how the interest in [...]

by Guest Contributor Angry Asian Man, originally published at Angry Asian Man

Aoki, by Ben Wang and Mike Cheng, is a new feature documentary chronicling the life of the late Richard Aoki, a third generation Japanese American who became one of the founding members of the Black Panther Party in 1966. Here’s the film’s official description:
[...]

by Guest Contributor Dumi Lewis, originally published at Uptown Notes

Dear Old Morehouse,
I’ve been trying to avoid writing this for some time now. As an alumnus of the institution, it’s hard for me to see you in such condition. Many of my fellow alumni complained of your disrepair and your besmirched image when they heard about [...]

By Guest Contributor Jeremy R. Levine, originally published at Social Science Lite

In Black Identities, Harvard sociologist Mary Waters analyzes the racial and ethnic identities of first and second generation West Indian immigrants in New York City. At its core, Black Identities is a study of paradox. Waters eloquently states, “[For West Indians], America is a [...]

by Guest Contributor Kelvin

Last Monday, I was in the middle of my daily ritual of checking on my favorite online newspapers and blogs, when I happened upon a blog post on Slate.com written by Jody Rosen. The title of the post is “The DORF Matrix: Towards a Theory of NPR’s Taste in Black Music”. [...]

by Guest Contributor Aymar Jean Christian, originally published at Televisual

When new technologies emerge a host of new companies tend to sprout up. Tons of independent radio stations catering to diverse interests before 1970s-style deregulation. Digital technology brought dozens of new channels to television; that same technology fostered numerous production companies making independent TV and films. [...]

by Guest Contributor Kiana, originally posted at ProperTalks and Postourgie

Sundance’s Brick City is the only reality TV show worth watching this week. The street soldiers, sheroes and heroes of Newark New Jersey along with Mayor Cory Booker are all attempting to renew Newark’s urban landscape but they are up against the city’s infamous reputation, [...]

By Guest Contributor Dumi Lewis, originally published at Uptown Notes

On Sunday night, Kanye West once again burst into the limelight with his interruption of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at MTV’s video music awards. His interruption and hyperbolic declaration of Beyonce’s video as the best of the decade caused the twitterverse, facebook, and likely nights and [...]

by Latoya Peterson
Bringing up Tyler Perry tends to complicate conversations.  He is a polarizing figure, represented by his work, an entrepreneur who provides work for black actors often passed over by the Hollywood machine, yet who trades in what some would call limiting representations of blackness and/or stereotypes.  He is often touted as proof that [...]

by Guest Contributor Tami, originally published at What Tami Said
As last week’s “Real Housewives of Atlanta” post has played out here and on What Tami Said and Racialicious (where it was crossposted), I have been thinking about what it means to represent the black race and how black people act as ambassadors to the mainstream world. [...]

By Guest Contributor dumi, originally published at Uptown Notes
For the past few weeks, my inbox has been inundated with references to Whites Only swimming pools in Philadelphia, the arrest of Henry Louis Gates and things of the like. With each subsequent email, I’ve been reminded “this is post-racial America” 1, 2. The type of tongue-in-cheek [...]

By Guest Contributor Monica, originally published at TransGriot
Racialicious Note: This post from TransGriot is from mid-June, so this festival has passed. But we thought this great list of African American LGBTQ films was worth posting anyway.
TransGriot Note: Received this interesting e-mail from the Maysles Institute in NYC about a TBLG film retrospective slated to kick [...]

By Guest Contributor Monica, originally published at TransGriot
One of the cool benefits of the recent Johnson Publishing Company deal with Google that allows digitizing of the iconic African-American magazines JET and EBONY is that it not only provides a record of Black history as it happened, it also is a cultural time capsule as well.
One [...]

By Sexual Correspondent Andrea (AJ) Plaid and Guest Contributor Fiqah
Fiqah:All right, full disclosure. I loathe Birth of a Nation. L-O-A-T-H-E, my friends. In my short time on this planet, I have been forced to endure two (!) viewings of the flick–twice the Recommended Lifetime Limit for Black people. The last time I watched this film [...]