Ethnic News

NEW ORLEANS -- Thousands trekked to New Orleans this July Fourth weekend to celebrate the much-anticipated 21st annual Essence Festival. This year’s celebration by Essence, one of the leading black women’s magazines, is expected to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to a city still making progress to restore itself from the devastation Hurricane Katrina left behind 10 years ago. More than 500,000 people attended last year’s four-day festival, and this year’s event will recognize and discuss important issues that have plagued the black community both before and since Katrina hit. “Essence Festival is an important gathering where we show who we are as a community, not ...

"Where we headed for? What's the future for me? What's the future for me? You know what I'm saying, for my child, for my son? What is his future?" That's what a distressed man asked Eric Garner's stepfather Benjamin Carr on Wednesday night after a grand jury decided not to indict the police officer accused of choking Garner to death. Protesters were gathered in Staten Island, New York, where the 43-year-old man died in August. The unidentified man told Carr, "What could possibly be done? The message is that it's different for them than for us. Years and years we've been fighting and fighting and nothing has...

For her latest play, Tanya Barfield aimed for "a transcending love story" that would not only "embrace the dichotomies in life," but also break fresh ground in the world of queer theater. "For many years, I wanted to write a romantic story," the Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright ("Blue Door") told The Huffington Post in an interview. "At the same time, I find the saccharine narratives that so often come when we think of love stories utterly boring. [I wanted to] speak honestly and truthfully about a relationship with all its highs and lows." The result is "Bright Half Life,...

Two decades ago, when Monty Williams was a forward with the Orlando Magic, he was pulled over by an Orlando, Florida, policeman for speeding on a freeway. Williams remembers...

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me decree: The age where you stop putting up with people's bullshit is 36. It may come well before then, but I know for sure the beaten, bloody corpse of giving-a-damn breathes its last miserable breath on your 36th day of birth. Too dramatic? You're right. I'm an artist. I get emotional sometimes. Let me try this again. This year on my 36th birthday, I received a phone call from someone purporting to wish me well; but I was instead met with an out-of-nowhere onslaught of anger, bitterness and passive-aggressive insults. I tried desperately to save the conversation, to walk away from the call with some sense of positivity, but the wounds were...

Ray Rice has no NFL team. But he hopes to return to football after a domestic violence arrest resulted in his release by the Baltimore Ravens and suspension from the league. In an interview Tuesday with Matt Lauer of "Today," the 27-year-old free agent running back discussed the fallout of an act of violence he committed against his wife (then-fiancee), Janay Rice, at a casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in February as well as his hopes of resuming his career. On Monday, "Today" aired an interview with Janay Rice, who married Ray Rice in March, about the incident as well as her controversial apology during a May press conference, purportedly delivered at the ...

Photo credit: :Blogspot/issatecargentina Skin bleaching has grown increasingly common among celebrities, and the general populace is following suit. Traditionally skin whitening has been viewed as originating from a feeling of self-hate and a desire to appear as someone else. This in combination with the negative health consequences of skin whitening has given the process a bad rap. While self-hate may motivate some to lighten their skin, a far more interesting proposition may in fact be true. By whitening one's skin, minorities may be seeking to make the limiting constructs of race disappear altogether. Minorities are individuals first and foremost. Consequently, they desire to distinguish themselves...

An Alabama judge has been accused of running ;roughshod over protections for poor defendants by ordering some to give blood or get locked up if they're unable to pay court fees. ; "If you do not have any money and you do not want to go to jail, as an option to pay it, you can give blood today," Circuit Judge Marvin Wiggins said, according to a Sept. 17 recording of him obtained by the Southern Poverty Law Center. "Consider that as a discount rather than putting you in jail." The unusual bargain is illegal, according to the law center, ;because defendants cannot be jailed over debts they are unable to pay. There must be ...