Arun Venugopal

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

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. 

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. 

150 of New York's nurses are heading to the Philippines to help victims of Typhoon Haiyan - many of them Filipino-Americans.

Filipino New Yorkers gathered Wednesday in Woodside, Queens in solidarity with the victims of Typhoon Haiyan.

This week, a war crimes tribunal in Bangladesh sentenced two men to death for the killings of 18 people during the country's war of independence from Pakistan, in 1971.

After spending years in the political wilderness, being cast as outsiders -- even un-American -- Muslim New Yorkers are in an unfamiliar position: they're set to have power.

Even in New York, where issues of faith usually reside on the margins of public life, the Pope has people talking. And although much of what he says is viewed through the reductive lens of politics — Is he liberal? Is he conservative? — for many Catholics his words have a deeply personal, emotional impact. 

In the Democratic primary race for mayor, Bill De Blasio won over more black voters than the black candidate, Bill Thompson, and more gay and lesbian voters than Christine Quinn, who is a lesbian. Are these signs of a post-racial, post-identity New York?

Hardly, says Ali Najmi, who argues that "local politics in New York City is more tribal than Kansas."

In this latest episode of Micropolis, we examine the age-old persecution of Sikhs, from India to post-9/11 America. Why do Sikhs such as actor Waris Ahluwalia (Inside Man, The Darjeeling Limited) identify with the racial history of African Americans?

And why, despite persecution and name-calling, do Sikh men continue to wear turbans?

The NYPD says gang activity may have been the cause of a 1-year-old baby's shooting death in Brownsville, Brooklyn over the weekend. It's the precinct with one of the highest crime rates in the city. For some area residents, it's a constant challenge to prevent their children from being drawn into gang life.

The March on Washington  — 50 years ago today — brought a quarter million demonstrators to the nation's capital, but it was planned and coordinated right here, in New York. It was an enormous logistical operation, years before cell phones and email, and it all happened uptown, in an office on 130th Street in Harlem.