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A few days before she won an academy award for 12 Years A Slave, actress Lupita Nyong'o read a letter from a fan at the Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon. The letter detailed a personal concern about the lightness of her skin tone and reignited a conversation that has gone on for centuries. Arun Venugopal, host of the WNYC series Micropolis, takes a closer look at the multibillion dollar, global industry of skin whitening. 

An Indian-American reporter recalls the deep shame he felt as a kid eating Indian food with his hands. But his daughter reminds him of the true joy of hand-eating, and he decides to try it in public.

Arun Venugopal, reporter and the creator of Micropolis—WNYC’s multi-platform series examining race, sexuality, religion, street life and other issues that define New York City—explores the old-fashioned practice of arranged marriage. He’ll be joined by Fraidy Reiss, who founded Unchained At Last, an organization to help women leave their arranged marriages, as she herself did. 

Video blogger Franchesca Ramsey talks with Arun Venugopal about how African Americans and South Asians view pigment.

Millions of women around the world use skin-lightening creams. Arun Venugopal, WNYC reporter, discusses the different attitudes towards cosmetics and race and his reporting for the new series, Micropolis.

As a South Asian growing up in Texas, Arun Venugopal never thought twice about eating with his hands while at home but in public in front of his friends and strangers alike, it was a different story. Arun hits Wall Street to see if this taboo of his childhood is still relevant in NYC today.

Alvin Entzminger, an ex-con and a long-time Central Harlem resident, shows you what you're overloooking.

 

Arun Venugopal speaks with Brooklyn rapper Talib Kweli about music, memories and the good and bad of gentrification.

 

Could it be that your family knows better than you when it comes to your love life?

In the ‘60’s and 70’s "Black is Beautiful" became a rallying cry for African Americans. Yet within the South Asian community, lightening products are a multi-billion dollar industry promising complexions and "whitish" skin tone. 

Reporter Arun Venugopal talks to Amber Ruffin, writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers, about how comedy is subverting racial stereotypes.  

Trying to stake a claim to the ever-shrinking American middle class? Paul Bhola, who lives in the northernmost neighborhood in the five boroughs, says it can be done — if you're ready to make some sacrifices.

It was his first week on the job and his first big test. How well did New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio handle the snow storm? Overall, the reviews are fairly positive. 

India's response to the arrest of one of its New York consular officials has been so overheated — and so willfully oblivious to a pattern of labor issues — it makes one wonder how far this international face-off will go. 

The city's foreign-born population has crossed the 3 million mark, a figure without precedent in municipal history and indicative of a decades-long metamorphosis of New York's character. 

Ethnic enclaves are among the jewels of New York — places where the city's immigrants can ease their way into American life. But there's a serious downside: they stifle English proficiency and limit opportunities to climb the economic ladder.

Bill Bratton was just appointed police commissioner of New York -- again. The last time around, the mayor was Rudy Giuliani and there were nearly 2,000 murders a year. Looking back on the first Bratton commissioner-ship and the city he helped tame.

Mayor Bloomberg announced that the city had balanced its budget, in what he claimed was "the first time in modern memory" that an incoming mayor wouldn't have to close a deficit. 

Residents of the South Street Seaport area voiced strong opposition Tuesday evening to a proposed redevelopment plan that would result in a high-rise in the neighborhood.

Governor Cuomo expanded a program to de-populate the state's most vulnerable flood zones by offering buyouts to 129 homeowners in Staten Island.