(Sally Ryan/The New York Times) Niko Koppel* authored a pretty dope article in the NYT spotlighting the work of Capers C. Funnye, Jr., the rabbi of the 200-member Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in Far Southeast Chicago, which is made up predominantly of black Jews. (Nah, not the weird Hebrew Israelites who dress Read More
What are we to do after our favorite show’s less-than-satisfying series finale? Keep talking about it. Oh, The Wire: your love is a 187. But worry not, y’all. We got that pandemic. Or, uh…some links and minutiae, anyway.
Ashley Alexander Dupre. The question of whether or not prostitution should just be legalized turns on whether you believe the oldest profession is an inevitable part of human society, and whether you think the benefits of regulation (bringing the workers into a controlled environment and taking arrest off the table so they might Read More
We’ve had this conversation on here before sorta: people don’t think they can be sexists/misogynists because they don’t rape/beat women; people don’t think they’re classist because they don’t spit on their maids; people ain’t racist because they’ve never attended a cross-burning. Ta-Nehisi Coates goes to town on the idea that racism is a lingering problem Read More
Just in case you haven’t been following the recent developments in the casting of the Christopher “Notorious B.I.G./Biggie” Wallace biopic, we thought we’d bring you up to speed here. Last week, the project, currently titled Notorious—to be directed by George Tillman Jr. (Soul Food, Men of Honor)— found its lead in Atlanta-based rapper, Gravy (aka Read More
To be fair, no one deserves to be the target of death threats. (Well, you know…exceptions can be made.) But you gotta wonder: what would it take for Kwame Kilpatrick’s supporters to turn against him? Not sacking a high-ranking police official he wanted to keep quiet. Not the allocation of public funds for personal use. Read More
Even though we usually agree with Keith Olbermann when he drops these bombs, they tend toward the long-winded/preachy. (10 minutes? Gotdamn.)
We have a rough (if slightly problematic) idea of what is generally used to define poverty for statistical purposes. Sociologists tend to define the middle class largely in terms of rough lifestyle — access to credit, property ownership, higher education (or the realistic expectation of it), savings accounts, etc. But, off the top of your Read More
But Obama, being all about that bridge-building, delivered Senate speeches with this as his intro, so maybe we shouldn’t question his hip-hop bona fides too tough.
