by Guest Contributor Imani Perry, originally published at Afronetizen

These are strange days indeed. We are firmly into the 21st century, and yet the 80s are haunting us. For African Americans it is yet again a decade of dream and deferral.
Back in the ‘80s, for the young Black and college educated, the doors of corporate America [...]

by Guest Contributor shani-o, originally published at Postbourgie

(The whole thing is on YouTube, who knew?)
I don’t expect you to have ever heard of For Love of Ivy. I hadn’t heard of it until a couple of years ago, one night when I was hanging out with my dad and we were trolling On Demand for [...]

by Latoya Peterson
On Friday, I joined Alyssa Rosenberg on Bloggingheads.Tv, to chat about the Oscars, which is my least favorite subject. We covered stereotypes, the expectations of the academy, and how to determine what is “a best picture.” But last night had some interesting upsets.
Kathryn Bigelow took home the award for the Best Picture [...]

By Special Correspondent Arturo R. García
Nothing good can come of a new Speedy Gonzales film. No matter what the intentions, or the updates George Lopez’s wife, Ann, is promising:
“We wanted to make sure that it was not the Speedy of the 1950s – the racist Speedy. Speedy’s going to be a misunderstood boy who comes [...]

By Deputy Editor Thea Lim
Reader Carleandria sent us this link to an article from the Times Online, discussing a controversy that is gaining ground in France after the release of a biopic on French writer Alexandre “The Three Musketeers” Dumas starring Gérard Depardieu:
A fuss over race has soured the release of the latest film in which [...]

By Deputy Editor Thea Lim

How do you know when a story is allying, versus appropriating?
In other words, if someone of privilege writes a story about the political oppression of a group they do not belong to, what is the difference between:
a) a story that brings marginalised voices to a wider platform and advocates for their [...]

By Deputy Editor Thea Lim
I had a great time with this article sent to us by reader mra: Complex Magazine’s run-down of the 50 Most Racist Movies You Didn’t Know Were Racist.  The list spans not just time but also ethnocultural group – I was happy to see that Complex pounced on movies offending all [...]

by Special Correspondent Arturo R. García

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
The die is cast early in My Name Is Khan, when the titular lead, Rizwan Khan (Shah Rukh Khan), having already been identified as autistic, is snarkily asked by a TSA agent what he has to tell the President.
“My name is Khan,” he answers. “And I am not [...]

Patrick Gonder’s work on “the primitive” in 1950s horror films is useful here. Gonder discusses the ‘devolved’ monsters of 50s horror cinema, such as Mr. Hyde and the cavemen-primitives, in terms of race, class, and notions of civilization. He writes that the “hybrid nature of the [devolved monster] asserts white masculinity against and through the [...]

By Guest Contributor AJ Christian, originally published at Televisual

The New York Times has an interesting interactive feature out that maps the top 50 rentals for 2009 based on the Netflix queues from a dozen US cities: New York, Boston, Chicago, Washington, Milwaukee, Dallas, Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Altanta, Seattle and Denver. The list is [...]

by Latoya Peterson

Regular reader Charlotte wrote in with a very interesting question:
I’m in a class at my university that focuses on cult movies and gender issues, and my professor has been describing the cult movie phenomenon as specifically white and middle class. You guys have been running a lot of articles on fans of color [...]

By Deputy Editor Thea Lim
Is it a new trend in trailers to highlight comic genius and audacity, by showing just a little bit of racism? First we had the Up in the Air trailer, and now this:

From Paris With Love stars John Travolta (apparently in a reprise of his Face/Off role, plus a keffiyeh) as [...]

by Special Correspondent Fatemeh Fakhraie

Fatemeh Fakhraie spoke with Cherien Dabis, the director behind the film Amreeka, a story about a Palestinian woman and her son as they adjust to their new life in America.
It seems that your experiences as an Arab-American have really shaped the way you tell stories. I remember [...]

by special correspondent Arturo R. García

My friends at Fantastic Fangirls turned me on to the Chromatic Comics meme that went around LiveJournal, Dreamwidth and similar blog sites. Simply put: a number of bloggers re-cast various fandoms with all-POC casts. Below are a few notable examples with links attached.
From Bossymarmalade’s Chromatic Marvel, you saw Vanessa Williams [...]

by Guest Contributor Geo, originally published at Prometheus Brown

Morgan Freeman: the kind of black dude even an old white racist can’t hate. Which is why he was cast to drive Miss Daisy, free a man from prison, become president (twice), help Batman, and become the literal, physical embodiment of God. Apparently has magic in his [...]