Updated Tuesday, Sept. 8, 11:04 p.m.: Serena Williams took three sets to defeat her sister Venus and advance to the semifinals of the U.S. Open. After her 6-2, 1-6, 6-3 quarterfinal win, she is still on track to achieve a calendar grand slam with a victory in Saturday’s women’s final. Earlier: In what is arguably…

Every time LeBron James makes it to the NBA Finals, there’s always a faction of the NBA fandom trying to make the case that LeBron should be considered the greatest of all time. At which point, longtime basketball fans—who aren’t from Cleveland or Miami—roll their eyes and tell those basketball dilettantes to get on YouTube…

When Comedy Central announced Monday that South African comedian Trevor Noah would replace Jon Stewart as the next host of The Daily Show, the collective response around the country seemed to be “Trevor who?” After all, the 31-year-old comic only joined the show as a regular correspondent in December and has appeared three times since.…

Lacey Schwartz grew up as a white, Jewish girl in the predominantly white community of Woodstock, N.Y., raised by Peggy and Robert Schwartz. But what she didn’t know at the time was that her biological father was black. The idea of “passing” for white has long been a part of African-American culture. But Schwartz’s story…

Anyone who has ever listened to the Wu-Tang Clan knows that movies, especially martial art films, have been a big influence on the hip-hop group’s sound and style. During a nearly hourlong keynote speech Monday at South by Southwest, RZA, the group’s chief founder, shared with his audience how the films he watched as a…

While the tech industry continued to try to figure out what to do about its diversity problem, 50 high school and college students of color were getting a taste of what it might be like to work in Silicon Valley at MVMT50’s inaugural hackathon, held over the weekend at  Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas. Organizations…

When the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown landed on the front page of the New York Times last year, it was a game-changing moment in the evolution of black Twitter, particularly in how social media was forcing mainstream news media to look at the way they portrayed African Americans. “Through the posting of two photos and a hashtag,…

Last week, Larry Wilmore—host of Comedy Central’s new late-night gig The Nightly Show—began his monologue with this: “Man, all of the good bad-race stuff happened already. Seriously. There’s none left. We’re done.” But anyone who’s been paying attention to the fast-changing news cycle these days knows that Wilmore’s razor-sharp comedic timing couldn’t have come at a…

It’s great that John Legend and Common won a Golden Globe on Sunday night for their song “Glory,” featured in the movie Selma. It’s an excellent song and it deserved to win. But Selma’s shutout in the other categories for which it was nominated—best director for Ava DuVernay, best actor for David Oyelowo and best…

Denzel Washington, who turns 60 on Dec. 28, has built a career that makes him worthy of being included in any discussion of the greatest actors of all time, alongside Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro and Sidney Poitier. With more than 40 films to his credit, he is one of the most versatile actors in…