by Guest Contributor G.D., originally published at PostBourgie

Up until last fall, I lived in Bed-Stuy, and the only supermarket near me was so far away that I would just do my food-shopping on the way back from my gym — which happens to be in a completely different neighborhood.  The bodegas on either end of [...]

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 [...]

Bryant Terry is an eco chef, food justice activist, and author of Vegan Soul Kitchen (VSK): Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine (Da Capo/Perseus March 2009). For the past nine years he has worked to build a more just and sustainable food system and has used cooking as a tool to illuminate the intersections among [...]

Excerpted by Latoya Peterson

Left out of the ensuing tangle of commentary on race and class has been the increasing impoverishment—or, we should say, re-impoverishment–of African Americans as a group. In fact, the most salient and lasting effect of the current recession may turn out to be the decimation of the black middle class. According to [...]

by Special Correspondent Wendi Muse
Continued from “Bela or Bust: Part 1: On Gender” . . .
Author’s note: My apologies for the delay between part one and part two! I have recently moved back to the United States and in between re-adjusting and job hunting, I had not had the chance or the mental clarity to sit [...]

by Latoya Peterson
The best article I have read to date on street lit was published last month in Elle Magazine.
Author Bliss Broyard – who explored her family’s complicated racial past in her book One Drop – presents the story of Miasha, a force in her own right and the subject of envy by other street [...]

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 Special Correspondent Fatemeh Fakhraie
At the airport bookstore, I immediately overlooked Bruce Willis’ and Emma Hemings’ smoldering stares on the cover of this month’s W. My attention went directly to the top left: “Meet the Neighbors: the Persian Conquest of Beverly Hills.”
Knowing the history of glossies and their historic portrayal of racial ethnicities more as [...]

by Guest Contributor danah boyd, originally published at Zephoria

[This is a rough unedited crib of the actual talk]
Citation: boyd, danah. 2009. “The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online.” Personal Democracy Forum, New York, June 30.

This talk was written for a specific audience – the attendees of the Personal Democracy Forum. This audience is primarily American, primarily [...]

by Latoya Peterson
In this month’s Marie Claire, Cameron Diaz is gracing the cover and bringing a message. The popular starlet has embraced the environment as her new motivation, and is doing a low budget movie/documentary about the state of our fair planet.
The reporter follows Diaz to her old neighborhood in Long Beach, California, noting [...]

by Guest Contributor Carly Kocurek, originally published at Sparklebliss

As is often the case when I find myself any place where cable is readily available. I stayed up entirely too late last night watching television, sucked into a movie I would have never deliberately viewed. Last night, the film in question was Bring It On: All [...]

Excerpted by Latoya Peterson

We can’t help but feel that if Heidi and Seal had decided to throw a “Chola” or “AZN” or “Gangsta”-themed party, the outcry would be greater, as was the case when mostly Anglo Tulane students threw a party based on Mexican stereotypes. And while we’ve been known to poke fun at the [...]

by Guest Contributor M. Dot, originally published at Model Minority

Last year, it took me roughly six weeks to earn $5,800. This is significant because during the late eighties and early nineties my mother received public assistance, subsequently she and I lived off of $5,800 for an entire year.
Yes, $5,800 per year.
Given these facts, last [...]

by Latoya Peterson
*Note – Spoilers and lengthy.*

My mother would never win any awards, believe me. You could call her an absentee parent: if she wasn’t at work she was sleeping and when she was around it seemed all she did was scream and hit. As kids, me and Oscar were more scared of [...]

by Guest Contributor Minh-ha, originally published at Threadbared

In New York magazine’s Spring Fashion issue, there are six feature stories on clothes, designers, and models including a story on a group of tenderfoot but fresh-faced white male models (”Fashion Week’s handsome rookies”), an interview with style icon Kate Moss on her clothing line at the much-anticipated [...]