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Jay Z’s Tidal Donates $1,500,000 to Black Lives Matter
Jay Z’s fledgling music-streaming platform, Tidal, is donating $1.5 million to Black Lives Matter and several other local and national social-justice organizations from money raised at an October concert, reports Mic. The announcement was made Friday, the same day Trayvon Martin would have turned 21 years old. The Trayvon Martin Foundation will receive a portion…
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Police Kill Unarmed Black Man in Texas; Say They Mistook Cellphone for Gun
San Antonio police say that they vow to do a thorough investigation into the shooting death of an unarmed black man who was shot and killed by cops, Reuters reports. Police say that Antronie Scott, 36, was spotted early Friday morning by undercover detectives and fatally shot as he exited a vehicle in an apartment…
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Watch: Did Beyoncé Culturally Appropriate Indian Culture in Her New Video?
A big issue in 2015 was the cultural appropriation of black or African-American culture, whether it was with rap music or cornrows. And there can be a bit of a wrinkle when African Americans are accused of the same thing. And so it happened with pop star Beyoncé, who is faulted by some for appropriating Indian…
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The SAG Awards Can Teach the Oscars a Thing or Two About Diversity
A slew of black actors, TV shows and films including Straight Outta Compton and Beasts of No Nation are up to be honored at tonight’s SAG Awards. Unlike the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which has a significant diversity problem and has faced significant backlash in recent weeks (see #OscarsSoWhite … again), all actors…
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Elizabeth Warren Scolds President Obama for Being Weak on Wall Street
Elizabeth Warren took it straight to President Barack Obama and his administration for being soft on enforcement against big corporations and white-collar crime in a New York Times op-ed Friday. In the piece entitled “One Way to Rebuild Our Institutions,” Warren concedes that the Obama administration has a strong track record in using executive actions…
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Ky. Detention Staff Used Aikido on 16-Year-Old Hours Before Her Mysterious Death
A 16-year-old girl at an Elizabethtown, Ky., juvenile-detention facility was restrained with a martial arts move for refusing to remove her sweatshirt during booking. The otherwise healthy teen was found dead in her cell the next morning. According to WDRB, Gynnya McMillen was booked at about 2 a.m. on Jan. 10 for a domestic-violence-related offense…
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Emails Reveal That Republicans Dismissed Desperate Flint, Mich., Residents
In what’s looking like an executive CYA move (and outside pressure), Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder released a flurry of emails this week relating to the Flint, Mich., water crisis, essentially throwing his staff under the bus for the disastrous, heinous debacle that has gotten worldwide attention and even led to calls for his arrest. Snyder, under fire…
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Duck Dynasty Star Adopts Black Baby
In what might be called a Hollywood trend, Jep Robertson and his wife, Jessica, stars of the wildly successful Duck Dynasty franchise, recently adopted an African-American baby, Jules Augustus Robertson, or baby Gus. Baby Gus made his debut on Jep and Jessica: Growing the Dynasty on A&E this Wednesday. Social media predictably weighed in this week, with the…
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National Black Republican Association Endorses Donald Trump for President
The National Black Republican Association, a self-proclaimed “grassroots activist” organization committed to “returning African Americans to their Republican roots” (i.e., “the party of Lincoln”), released a statement Friday saying that it was “pleased to announce [its] endorsement of Donald J. Trump for President of the United States of America.” The Florida-based organization, founded in 2005,…
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Phoenix High School Seniors Face Wrath for Human N-Word Collage; School’s Black Student Union Weighs In
Oh, Arizona. You never fail to amaze. Neither do teens who don’t realize how quickly a photo posted to social media can upend their lives. Surely by now you have seen the photo circulating on social media with six American teenage girls—flanked abreast, smiles ablaze—and the n-word plastered across their chests. Each young woman is…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
