173 Search results for "commercial"

Today, Adidas announced that they are canceling plans to sell the controversial “shackle” shoe, which many descried as racially insensitive. What do you think of their apology? Was the shoe design simply “quirky” and “lighthearted,” or attempting to commercialize slavery?

I have lived in Oak Park all my life. It is a suburb of Chicago, just minutes away from downtown. Almost two weeks ago, on June 3, The Velvet Rope, a gay bar in Oak Park’s commercial center burned down. The incident was deemed arson. Hateful graffiti was left behind and nothing was stolen. The […]

Mary J. Blige has been cast to play Betty Shabazz in the upcoming film, Parallel Lives, a television film about Shabazz and Coretta Scott King, the widows of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., respectively. Do you think Blige has the acting chops to pull this off?

Every week, the Black Youth Project collects the top news stories about black youth from across the country. Click here to check out our archive of weekly news round-ups, and check back every Monday for a new roundup of headlines about young black America.

(I Learned By Watching You) I. Last week, I submitted a news story to the BYP concerning yet another case of bullying. Joel Morales, a 12-year-old from East Harlem, hanged himself because he had grown tired of relentless harassment from other students. I forwarded the story just a few weeks after having sent an update regarding the FAMU […]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0iCprjZBIY Although I sorta kinda spoke out against marriage last week, I’m not anti-coupling. In fact, sometimes linking up with another person yields gallons of awesomeness: Jaden Smith and Justin Bieber, Doc Brown and Marty, Pinky and the Brain, Dre and Big Boi, Cephus and Reesie. ABC has decided to capitalize on this with its […]

Since when has skateboarding become a standard by which we judge black masculinity? Prior to Lupe Fiasco and Pharrell Williams, you would not see skate culture—promotion of local skate shops, perfection of kick flips and ollies, etc.—in music videos. Back then, the culture had an explicit expression whether it was Mr. “Skateboard P” himself or […]

Parents and community members in Pine Bluff, Arkansas are outraged after a school police officer used pepper spray to clear a middle school hallway, injuring nearly 20 students. Is it ever appropriate to use peppery spray inside of a school?

Wow, Mary J. Blige! Way to attempt to throw Burger King under the proverbial bus. The only thing more laughable than your people’s move to distance you from the role you played in Burger King’s celebrity-laden rebranding effort was the actual commercial. And yes, I laughed. Hard. Hysterically. More than once. Let’s take another look: […]

As much as I’d like to stop publicly mourning the death of a person I never met, I’m not ready. Tweeting #shoopforjesus, randomly saying “‘Re ain’t here!?” to whomever will listen, and concluding that Whitney wasn’t that bad of a dancer after watching the “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” video are clear indicators that I’m: 1. […]

“I left him dead in the living room/ get it, dead in the living room” -Lil Wayne from the song “9 Piece” Recently on a trip to New York I had the radio tuned in to Hot 97, one of the most popular and well known urban radio stations in the country. I wasn’t surprised […]

Now that we have successfully gobbled our way through Thanksgiving, businesses may commence annoying us silly with a loop of Christmas songs pumping through their store speakers and a slew of emails advertising deals for Cyber Monday/Week/Month/Year/Millennium, since we are fewer than three weeks away from the big day. Although I will more than likely […]