Last week, actress Regina King expressed chagrin in The Huffington Post at the lack of diversity at the 2010 Emmys. Earlier this year, Vanity Fair’s now-infamous all-white “young Hollywood” cover evinced that women of color are still completely marginalized in film. I thought about these events when I read yesterday that a bidding war of […]
Author: Courtney Young
Courtney Young is the Founder and Chief Creative Officer at Think Young Media, a technology and social media firm located in New York that specializes in social media consulting. She blogs at The Thirty Mile Woman. Follow her on twitter @cocacy @thinkyoungmedia
Oscar Grant and LeBron James: What Would bell hooks Have Said?
I thought about bell hooks on July 8 as basketball star LeBron James made the highly publicized announcement that he would be playing with the Miami Heat. That same day the verdict was read against Johannes Mehserle, the cop who shot and killed Oscar Grant, an unarmed young black man. That day marked critical turning […]
Farewell to Ms. Lena
“You have to be taught to be second class; you’re not born that way”, is just one of the many Lena Horne aphorisms that traversed through social networking sites yesterday at the news of the pioneer’s passing. President Barack Obama, Bill Cosby, Janet Jackson and millions of citizens across the globe felt the weight of […]
Experiencing Erykah Badu’s “Window Seat”
Folks can’t stop talking about Erykah Badu’s minimalist, one-person-crew video effort for her newest song “Window Seat.” Shot in a single take, guerilla-style, Badu trailed the route of President John F. Kennedy at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, simultaneously shedding all her clothes until she reached the place where Kennedy was shot, then she collapsed to the […]
What Can We Do About Colorism?
From the media to beauty products, colorism is rampant. Clearly, we live in a world where race and skin color matters, so why don’t we talk about it?
Thumbs Down on “The Price of Beauty” from Jessica Simpson
By now, many have heard of (or seen) Jessica Simpson’s new Vh1 reality series The Price of Beauty. The premise of the show: Simpson and her best friends Ken and CaCee visit various countries to discover what each considers beautiful, finding out in the process the extreme lengths that women, in particular, will go to achieve that prized image.
On the 97th Year Since Harriet Tubman Died
Born a slave in Maryland during 1822, the adolescent Tubman (then Araminta Ross) suffered a blow to her head from a cruel overseer, as a result suffering seizures, headaches and hallucinations for the rest of her life. Nonetheless, in her late 20s she escaped to freedom in Philadelphia and made more than a dozen trips back to Maryland, leading both her own family and dozens of other slaves to freedom.
Mo’Nique, Bigelow and Oscar
This season’s Academy Awards race, ending with last night’s historic ceremony, was without a doubt the ripest, richest Oscar period in recent memory for popular culture critics to sink their teeth into.
Three of the ten Best Picture nominees–The Blind Side, District 9, and Avatar–battled accusations of racist subtexts within the scope of their film narratives. Kathryn Bigelow became symbolic of the fact that women directors have rarely been nominated for Oscars and had never won.