13 h. ago Halle Berry says Oscars not ‘designed’ for Black women: ‘We have to stop coveting that’

Monster’s Ball star is only Black woman to win best actress Oscar in 97-year-old history of Academy Awards

Politics

26 h. ago Netflix Black Mirror season 7 cast announced including Doctor Who legend

Black Mirror has a history of attracting established talent, with the likes of Miley Cyrus, Jon Hamm, Salma Hayek and Jodie Whittaker all earning a spot in Charlie Brooker's nightmarish vision of the future.

Politics

66 h. ago Top Cambridge museum provides recovery rooms for guests 'triggered' by factual black history displays

A top Cambridge museum now provides recovery rooms for guests who are 'triggered' by black history displays.

Culture

4 d. ago Number One on the Call Sheet review – a spectacular tribute to black excellence in Hollywood

Jaw-droppingly star-studded and stuffed with incredible stories, this series is a joy to watch. Just wait till you hear the one about James Brown burying bags of cash in the woods Denzel Washington. Don Cheadle. Morgan Freeman. Laurence Fishburne. Idris Elba. Viola Davis. Halle Berry. Cynthia Erivo. Angela Bassett. Octavia Spencer. To say that the cast of Apple’s new two-part, feature-length documentary series is stacked would be an understatement, and that truly is only a smattering of its many interviewees: I’d be here all week if I listed every single one. A celebration of black excellence in Hollywood, these two films are produced by the likes of Jamie Foxx and Kevin Hart, and stuffed full of household names who have made it to that coveted No 1 spot on the call sheet – in other words, the top-billed star of a production. They also offer a potted history of how black actors came to thrive in Hollywood – and the struggle baked into almost every stage of that process.Episode one f...

Politics

7 d. ago Garcelle Beauvais announces departure from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills after five seasons

Beauvais made history when she became the first Black cast member in the ‘Beverly Hills’ cast

Politics

9 d. ago Cambridge University in row over claims Stephen Hawking benefited from slavery

Cambridge is in a dispute with academics after an exhibition linked Stephan Hawking with the slave trade

Politics

1 week ago The future happens in Oakland first. That’s a cautionary tale for global cities

International trade boomed with the city’s early adoption of technological and economic changes, but Black neighborhoods became ‘sacrifice zones’Oakland, California, is often treated as a city on the margins, best known for its struggles with poverty and gun violence, as well as for its history of radical Black activism. But a new book, The Pacific Circuit, argues that Oakland should be viewed as one of the centers of global change in the past century, serving both as a key node in the new global economy built around trans-Pacific trade, and as one of the “sacrifice zones” this economy requires.Far from being an outlier, US journalist Alexis Madrigal argues, Oakland is in fact an early adopter of the technological and economic changes now tearing through cities across the US, and around the world. Oakland has long been the canary in Silicon Valley’s coalmine of disruption, the book suggests. But its residents don’t suffer passively: they organize and learn how to fight back. Continu...

Politics

1 week ago Just Another Girl on the IRT review – Leslie Harris takes on race, sex and class in 90s indie gem

Ariyan A Johnson stars as the back-talking, fourth wall-breaking high schooler who falls pregnant in Harris’s rough and ready dramaThere’s an undimmed freshness, warmth and freewheeling energy in this 1992 indie gem, and its director Leslie Harris – whose career since has chiefly involved writing and teaching – deserves a far bigger presence in US film history. Ariyan A Johnson plays Chantel, a young Black American high schooler who lives with her stressed parents and two kid brothers in Brooklyn (in an era before its gentrification) and rides the subway’s IRT Eastern Parkway line.Chantel is getting great grades in school, and plans to be a doctor, but is addicted to talking back to the teachers and won’t restrain herself, even when she’s sent to the principal’s office. Her relationship with her mother and father is just as fraught – and as far as dating goes, Chantel is not going to sell herself short. And when she finally has sex with her boyfriend Tyrone (Kevin Thigpen), dizzied ...

Events

1 week ago Too relaxed about the risks: the crisis in Black women’s hair care

For generations, Black women have been put at risk by a hair care industry that evades regulation. But is change on the way? Plus: the history of Black US postal workersHello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week I look into the emerging health hazards associated with styling Black hair, and how for generations Black women have been let down by legislation, social pressure and the forever shifting demands of the beauty industry. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago Broadway's 'Wicked' welcomes Lencia Kebede, its first pionering full

Green tears were flowing when Lencia Kebede made history this week on Broadway, becoming the first Black actor to assume the role of Elphaba full time in the Broadway company of “Wicked.”

Politics

3 w. ago ‘The palace called and I heard myself saying yes’: how Errollyn Wallen went from Top of the Pops to Master of the King’s Music

Written off in her youth, the unstoppable Belize-born musician has overcome indifference, mockery and abuse to become one of Britain’s most acclaimed composers. You have to hang onto your own worth, she tells our writerFor at least half her life, the Belize-born British composer Errollyn Wallen, appointed last year to the title of Master of the King’s Music, has steered herself through a web of invisible rules. Classical composers, dead or alive, were male and white. Their Black and female counterparts were derided or ignored, excised from history. Then, slowly but definitively, things changed, and the institutions that used to give her the cold shoulder started to open up to the music they had dismissed. “People always want to put labels on things, on people,” Wallen says, without rancour. “Let them. You have to hang on to your own worth, see what needs doing. I was written off young, but then found a way through. There’s still so much work to be done.”Wallen’s musical range is amb...

Politics

3 w. ago ‘We’re going backwards’: the Black student unions forced to close on US campuses

Black student unions at US colleges are fighting to stay in operation as state laws targeting DEI initiatives threaten their existenceFor Nevaeh Parker, the president of the Black student union (BSU) at the University of Utah, Black History Month is usually a buzzing time on campus.The school’s BSU hosts several events – kickback parties and movie screenings – throughout the month. The Black cultural center, where students would usually congregate and attend activities, would be full. And the month’s crown jewel would typically be a conference at the college for Black high schoolers in the area. Continue reading...

Events

3 w. ago ‘We’re going backwards’: the Black student unions being defunded on US campuses

Black student unions at US colleges are fighting to stay in operation as state laws targeting DEI initiatives threaten their existenceFor Nevaeh Parker, the president of the Black student union (BSU) at the University of Utah, Black History Month is usually a buzzing time on campus.The school’s BSU hosts several events – kickback parties and movie screenings – throughout the month. The Black cultural center, where students would usually congregate and attend activities, would be full. And the month’s crown jewel would typically be a conference at the college for Black high schoolers in the area. Continue reading...

Events

4 w. ago ‘The blue blues have never left us’: a new book examines the color’s spanning ties to Black culture

Imani Perry’s Black in Blues traces the ways blue is woven through Black history, from Miles Davis to Toni MorrisonWhat makes blue Black?In her latest book, Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People, the scholar and writer Imani Perry traces the spanning, interdisciplinary connection between the color blue and the Black diaspora. Continue reading...

Culture

4 w. ago Paul Tazewell becomes first Black man to win an Oscar for best costume design

Paul Tazewell made history at the Oscars, becoming the first Black man to win best costume design

Politics

last month Angie Stone was a wise singer who deeply understood the power of love and lust

The neo-soul artist, who has died aged 63, had years of experience by the time she became a star – and brought it to bear on a carnal, careworn catalogue• News: soul singer Angie Stone dies in a car crash at 63Angie Stone was no overnight success. By the time 2001’s Mahogany Soul made her a star, she’d logged two decades in the game, starting out in pioneering all-girl rap trio the Sequence, before passing through went-nowhere R&B groups like Devox and Vertical Hold and writing and singing with other artists (including D’Angelo, her former lover and father of their son, Michael). Once Clive Davis’s Arista Records signed her in 1999, those years of experience set her apart from the neo-soul pack, having worn a powerful grain into her rich, agile voice, and steeping her music in soul’s deep history.Her debut for Arista, Black Diamond, retooled lush 70s soul for the new century: Green Grass Vapors – a love song to the sweet leaf with Stone “higher than the Thunder Dome” – was from ...

Politics