If you want to know more about coffee specifically and exploitation generally, definitely check out Black Gold airing on PBS on April 10th. The independent film by Nick Francis and Marc Francis reveals the plight of Ethiopian coffee farmers and why they receive a tiny fraction of the profit on their goods.
The film, which [...]

Ever heard of the Westboro Baptist Church? It’s a small church in Topeka, Kan. whose mission is to spread the word throughout the world that “God Hates America.” This church was spearheaded by Pastor Fred Phelps (who actually looks like the devil himself). His basic, homophobic doctrine blames our country’s failed success [...]

My apologies for the aggressively unoriginal post title, but I am running dangerously low on creative fuel. Thanks to endless bounty of the internet though, I am rarely tasked to come up with anything original - instead I can just string together a couple of barely coherent sentences, provide a link or three and let [...]

It may not have been a good week in Washington or in Iraq (is it ever?), but this week has certainly been good for soul music fans. Here are four r&b artists that P+P thinks you could use to update your music library.
Amy Winehouse is a British jazz and soul singer who recently made [...]

As if the discussion of Barack Obama’s authenticity as a black man wasn’t enough, a March 19 LA Times op-ed written by columnist David Ehrenstein attacks his supporters, claiming whites support him in order to assauge white guilt by supporting the “Magic Negro.”
He describes the “Magic Negro” as being “a figure of postmodern folk culture, [...]

Bob in Los Feliz gave me the best haircut of my life. But it cost: I had to spend two hours of my life with the man. Although he’s a hair perfectionist, he spent more time talking about his styling prowess and worldwide acclaim than he did actually cutting my locks.
My mother—who was visiting from [...]

One-time all-powerful special prosecutor Ken Starr is being exposed again as an overrated fumbler, this time it’s in his fight against those Alaska teenagers who have managed to take to the Supreme Court their battle over the right to wave a sign in a public space. Their unassailable message back in 2002, “Bong Hits 4 [...]

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Hometown Baghdad, a serial documentary on the web that follows three twentysomethings as they go through their everydays in the capital city of post-liberation madness. Dude wakes up and suddenly eating mixed salad is declared a breech of Islamic law. Another can’t get his diploma in dentistry [...]

“Crime and out-of-wedlock birth, black folks having babies without being married and stuff like that, is out of control…most of them lack moral character. Look what they did to the Dome. In three days, they turned the Dome into a ghetto…”
Yesterday my colleague Aaron Morrison received an email from the president of the Bay Area [...]

Finally we’ll get to see a black princess in an animated film, something that would have been helpful to my self-esteem during my childhood ten or fifteen years ago. Disney is set to release The Frog Princess in 2009, the first 2-D animation film since big-ears released Home on the Range in 2004. [...]