Garrett Augustus Morgan Sr., born on March 4, 1877 in Claysville, Kentucky, is a name that comes up often during each Black History Month. The inventor, businessman, activist, and self-proclaimed “Black Edison” is best remembered today as the inventor of an early version of the three-way traffic light. He was a member of the burgeoning […]
In 2011, State Farm achieved television immortality with nothing more than a red polo and a pair of khakis. The iconic “Jake from State Farm” insurance mascot was born in a brief thirty-second commercial featuring Jake Stone, an actual State Farm employee from Bloomington, Illinois. Despite the commercial’s instant and enduring success, Stone never reprised
Two of the most enduring blights on the history of African American culture are the concepts of being “too black” and “not black enough.” Though heavily featured among African Americans, the concepts, which are closely linked to colorism and identity politics, are by no means exclusive to them. The favorability of fair skin is a
If you’re a regular MSNBC or Fox News enjoyer, you’re no doubt privy to both networks’ recurring the-other-guys-are-literally-Satan routine. If you don’t watch either network, you may catch wind of something along these lines from acquaintances, friends, or family members. If not them, then from politicians, social media posts, Internet memes, picket signs, bumper stickers,
In 1962, novelist William Melvin Kelley provided “a hip assist” to white New York Times readers by translating the black slang term “woke” as “well-informed, up-to-date.” Four decades later, singer-rapper-songwriter Erykah Badu revealed through her song “Master Teacher” that she “stay[s] woke,” and implored her audience to do the same. The early 2010s saw the
The paradox of tolerance, first outlined by Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper, explains that the attractive glitter of universal tolerance may not actually be gold. The paradox suggests that if a society is truly tolerant of everything then it must also be tolerant of intolerance, introducing a slippery slope that could eventually see intolerance completely supplanting
There’s a reason cut-and-dried contests between good and evil occur more frequently in fairytales than reality. Such fantasies aren’t subject to humanity’s “absolute chaos of differences” that Hannah Arendt wrote political bodies seek to find common threads in. This chaos rarely allows for situations in which the good guys are always good and the bad
Natives and outsiders alike know that Boston stands unrivaled as the most hated sports city in the country and arguably the world. Why? Simple: their teams are too good. The respective twenty-seven and seventeen championship victories of the widely maligned New York Yankees and Los Angeles Lakers, for example, have inspired envy and ire in
In the early morning hours of Wednesday, November 6, 2024, Donald Trump was elected to a second presidential term. The feat came with several historical firsts. In claiming victory, Trump became the first president to serve nonconsecutive terms since Grover Cleveland in 1892. He also became the first president to be reinstated following impeachment—let alone
The school year ended on a horrible note in late June. The Supreme Court made a historic decision to strike down affirmative action in higher education in Students for Fair Admissions vs Harvard. They declared that race and cultural background should not be a factor during the admissions process. The decision caused students and faculty
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