Like most of America, I’ve had a week. Whereas Charlottesville, Va., touched off a week of necessary discussions, debates and arguments centering largely on our president’s ignorance and emboldening of the very real problems in America, I’ve had exhausting, draining and, ultimately, disappointing arguments about…

Justine Damond was, by all accounts, the sort of woman who couldn’t help but nurture and protect the life around her. In the wake of Damond’s death—she was fatally shot while unarmed and pajama-clad by Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor, who was responding to her 911 call—photojournalist Angela Jimenez released a…

On the late afternoon of November 20, 2012, just a few weeks shy of her 20th birthday, Sage Smith stepped out of the neon pink-walled apartment in Charlottesville, Virginia, she shared with two friends. After a tough and tumbling childhood, things finally seemed to be falling into place: She had moved out of her…

I first met Issa Rae in 2011 shortly after her web series, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, wrapped its first irreverent season. Though we’d never met, we laughed like old friends about everything from dating in L.A. to Idris Elba’s unstoppable swag. At the time, I didn’t know Rae was on the verge of stardom—I…

The Big Sick has been roundly lauded in the press lately, including here at Jezebel, and not without good reason: it’s a funny, heartwarming love story based on the true-life experiences of cowriters/married couple Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon. But as much as I liked it—and I did—I also found myself exhausted, …

You’ve seen the type of indie-flick protagonist that Janicza Bravo’s brilliant first feature Lemon is centered on: The bearded and 40-year-old Isaac is prone to non sequiturs and chaos. His life seems to be in tatters, but Lemon has the smell of one of those movies where it’s all going to work out in the end for its…

Once you get Master of None star Lena Waithe talking about Hollywood, it’s hard for her to stop. “If we could get people to really hone their craft, we can really change this business inside out,” she says, arguing that more black writers deserve a chance.

It is 2017 and things seem to be going relatively well for The Bachelorette’s first black contestant, Rachel Lindsay. With both those things it mind, it was therefore only a matter of time before racist tweets from one of her suiters surfaced because yes, that sounds about right.

In many ways, Everything, Everything is your typical teenage rom-com. It centers on Maddy, a beautiful but socially awkward young woman who’s allergic to everything—the air, grass, germs—and therefore has been sheltered from the world by her overprotective mother. But when a handsome teen named Olly moves in next…

The civil unrest that followed the acquittal of four Los Angeles police officers whose brutal beating of Rodney King was caught on film has been etched into American history—“The Rodney King riots” shorthand for the events also known as the Los Angeles Uprising.

In case you haven’t perused what’s going on in trendy fast fashion lately, here’s a glimpse: Taking internet slang—often the sort popularized by black people—and turning it into sellable goods is so hot right now.

In a world filled to the brim with absurdity, it is remarkable that we’re somehow still talking about Rachel Dolezal—the white woman who masqueraded for years as a black person. It’s been nearly two years ago her facade fell and since then we’ve been inundated with absurd headlines about her identification as…

I got into HBO’s Big Little Lies a few weekends ago for a light binge and was pleasantly delighted by four hours of DRAMA. At first, I thought: How am I gonna relate to these rich white wimmenz and their rich white wimmenz problems? While the drama was juicy and the characters were relatable (on a basic human level,…

On Monday night, Timothy Caughman was stabbed with a sword in New York City while collecting bottles on a sidewalk in Manhattan, later dying of his injuries at a nearby hospital. According to police, he was randomly targeted by his assailant because he was black.

House Bill 151, which passed the newly GOP-controlled Kentucky House of Representatives and is awaiting approval from the GOP-controlled Kentucky Senate, would effectively re-segregate schools in Kentucky’s largest district by requiring districts to allow children to attend the school closest to their home, destroying…

On Monday night, The Bachelor headed to four distinct hometowns so Nick could meet the families of the women he is still courting. As the newly minted Bachelorette, Rachel’s date was by far the most interesting, due to its heavy emphasis on the conflicts that can come along with an interracial relationship and the…

In a scene from John M. Stahl’s 1934 film Imitation of Life, a fair-skinned girl named Peola sits in a classroom, listening to her teacher read Little Women. Upon seeing her mother Delilah—a black housekeeper played by actress Louise Beavers—enter the room in search of her, Peola conceals her face with a book. “I’m…

There is no question that Emmett Till, and his murder-by-lynching which helped galvanize the Civil Rights Movement, is perpetually relevant. On Friday, Till, who’s been dead for over 60 years, trended on Twitter when news broke that Carolyn Bryant Donham—whose husband, Roy Bryant, and brother-in-law, J.W. Milam,…

China Machado, iconic fashion model and fashion editor whose career began in the early 1950s and spanned the rest of her life, died Sunday due to cardiac arrest, WWD reports. She was 86 and fabulous to the end.