Black Culture Feed

I always wonder if that's the first thing they ask Rihanna when they meet her. 'RiRi! How are you so confident?'

CULTURE TYPE: Duke University Professor of Art History RIchard J. Powell talks about the life and work of 20th century painter Archibald Motley. Duke's Nasher museum is exhibiting the work of the master colorist and interpreter of African American life and urban culture. Read Interview Photo: "Black Belt" by Archibald J. Motley Jr. | Collection of the Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia. © Valerie Gerrard Browne.

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BET: NYU Offering Course on Sean "Diddy" Combs - The Clive Davis Institute of Recording Music at New York University is offering the class "Topics: Sean Combs & Urban Culture." Jayson Jackson, former VP of Marketing and Promotion at Diddy's Bad Boy imprint, will teach the class. Read Story

NY TIMES: A tone-deaf inquiry into an Asian-American’s ethnic origin. Cringe-inducing praise for how articulate a black student is. An unwanted conversation about a Latino’s ability to speak English without an accent. This is not exactly the language of traditional racism, but in an avalanche of blogs, student discourse, campus theater and academic papers, they all reflect the murky terrain of the social justice word du jour — microaggressions — used to describe the subtle ways that racial, ethnic, gender and other stereotypes can play out painfully in an increasingly diverse culture. Read Story

NY TIMES: Where Are the People of Color in Children's Books? - Of 3,200 children’s books published in 2013, just 93 were about black people, according to a study by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin. Read Story Illustration: Christopher Myers

NY TIMES: An Unrewarded Leap of Faith - At Flight 23, the Best Jordans are on the Customers. The author hoped the new Foot Action specialty store dedicated to the Air Jordan brand would be a "Mecca, a place for acolytes to gather and swap stories while gazing passionately at the new offerings. It would be home, a salon, a womb," but it is more like a souvenir shop "essentially selling the mystique for cheap." Read Story

BOSTON GLOBE: “El Anatsui: New Worlds,” at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, is a small show of only about a half-dozen artworks by the superstar artist, but it’s a spectacle of an installation. Read Story

MILITARY.COM: DC National Guard Get First Black Female Pilot - The District of Columbia National Guard is celebrating Women’s History Month with a landmark: Army 1st Lt. Dina Elosiebo earned her Army aviator wings after completing Initial Entry Rotary Wing Flight School at Fort Rucker, Ala., making her the first female African-American pilot in D.C. Army National Guard history. Read Story

For Richard Henry Green, recently declared to have been Yale College’s first known African-American graduate, fame, or at least the certainty of his claim on history, was fleeting. Recent weeks have brought nothing but new challengers.

DIVERSITY INC: Alexis Gardener and some of her UCLA Law School classmates produced a nine-minute video titled 33, in which students speak candidly about their experiences as the underrepresented group at UCLA. Gardner is one of only 33 Black students at the UCLA School of Law; currently, the student body totals 1,100, making Black law students a mere 3 percent of the population. The video was produced to draw attention to the lack of diversity at the law school. Read Story

A photo campaign highlighting the faces and voices of black students at Harvard College. Our voices often go unheard on this campus, our experiences are devalued, our presence is questioned-- this project is our way of speaking back, of claiming this campus, of standing up to say: We are here. This place is ours. We, TOO, are Harvard.

NPR: Tired of people suggesting they don't belong at Harvard, black students at the elite college began a campaign called "I, Too, Am Harvard." It's gone viral, sparking debate at other schools, as well.