racism

Samuel L. Jackson, Jeffrey Wright, and David Oyelowo have all portrayed civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., whose Atlanta sit-ins, Montgomery bus boycotts, and peaceful protests desegregated the nation. When Kelvin Harrison Jr. was first offered the role, he was overwhelmed by the weight of the historical figure and turned it down.  “I still was a little bit scared and unsure if that was something that I needed to be participating in,” Harrison tells Rolling Stone. “I didn’t really see what I could offer…

On the morning of Feb. 18, 2022, Cassandra Black Elk, a 26-year-old indigenous woman in South Dakota, woke up to find her three-week-old daughter, Starlight, unresponsive in the bed next to her. It was every mother’s nightmare, but for Black Elk, this was just the beginning.  Within 10 minutes of arriving at Black Elk’s home, police began questioning her, demanding she tell them how she had harmed her baby. No one had hurt the baby, she told them. She had put her two eldest to bed, fed the youngest one a bottle,…

In Billy Crystal’s musical medley that opened the 1992 Oscars, he sang a tribute to Barbra Streisand’s romantic drama The Prince of Tides to the tune of “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” the song made famous, of course, by Barbra Streisand. He crooned: “Seven nominations on the shelf, did this film direct itself?” The audience burst into loud applause and the camera panned to Streisand who gave a nod of approval that seemed tinged with a note of disappointment.  Streisand’s film, which she directed and starred in, was…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Youth employment in Canada continues to be a concern. Young people between the ages of 15 and 30 are less likely to find and sustain employment compared to an older population of Canadians. According to Statistics Canada, around 11 percent of youth aged 15–24 are unemployed. Among young Black Canadians that number is…

For Ava DuVernay, whose projects like 13th, Selma, and When They See Us challenge viewers to contend with the gut-wrenching racism that’s colored American history, Origin provides a more global perspective on racial inequality and its foundation within social hierarchies.    “I try to make soul food with my movies, not junk food, not fast food,” DuVernay tells Rolling Stone. “Not stuff that goes in and goes straight up the next day, but stuff that sticks to your ribs.”  Origin, which DuVernay wrote and…

The double standard is almost as old as hip-hop itself. A decorated filmmaker gets laurels for his or her latest bullet-laden gangster movie. A rock or country star is proclaimed a songwriting genius for violent tales of man’s inhumanity to man. But rappers are held to a different standard, their every line held up as some kind of documentary evidence of an artist’s criminal intent. Sometimes, those lyrics are even used in courtrooms by prosecutors eager to take advantage of the public’s built-in prejudices and…

It is a truth universally acknowledged (or at least it should be by now) that America is a country founded upon — as well as cursed, colonized, and fertilized by — a bedrock of racism that continues to this day. Should you be unable to wrap your head around that in 2024, we’re not sure what to say to you. But to chalk up modern social inequity and state-sanctioned violence against certain communities to being “merely” a racially-biased phenomenon and simply leave it at that is insufficient. There’s something deeper…

Taraji P. Henson is no stranger to hustle. Throughout college, she spent most post-class evenings singing, dancing, and waiting tables on a D.C. cruise ship and her early mornings as a receptionist at The Pentagon to help cover her Howard University tuition. Henson still wears many hats as the owner of the haircare line TPH by Taraji, the founder of the mental wellness nonprofit Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation, and most recently as the brazen Shug Avery in the blockbuster musical The Color Purple.  “I just had my…

The management philosophy known as DEI, which had gathered momentum since 2020, has been under siege over the past year because of a collision of legal, economic and geopolitical forces. The Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in colleges, removing the legal rationale buttressing many diversity programs. An expected slowdown in the economy prompted companies to cut jobs and financial support for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. And the Israel-Hamas war and college presidents’ responses to antisemitism…

For Chaka Khan, the end of 2023 was nothing short of triumphant. In November, she was finally inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and she also moved from Los Angeles to a big, rural property in Georgia, where she says she’s found “peace of mind.” The R&B icon, who just released a new fragrance (Chaka by Chaka Khan), and is still playing live dates even as she strives to wind down her touring schedule, looked back at some career highlights and struggles in the latest edition of our Last Word…