Gene Demby

Earlier this month, St. Paul's College, a tiny, 125-year old liberal arts college in southern Virginia, quietly announced that it was throwing in the towel and would be closing its doors at the end of June.

The 600-student college had been struggling for years to find funding and to remain ...

What up, bro? What's good, brah?

This is the chant of the bro, an equally parodied and celebrated genus of young men. (They've been designated "bros" mostly because, well, they say "bro" a whole lot.)

The usage of "bro" as a term of endearment isn't new, obviously. (As the indispensable ...

LeBron James is Superman to Michael Jordan's Lex Luthor.

That's going to sound blasphemous, but more than the San Antonio Spurs, whom he faces for all of the marbles in tonight's NBA finals, or any other team he might face in the future, James' biggest foil is actually Michael Jordan, ...

We've written before about the wealth gap between whites and people of color — a divide that's only grown wider over the past half decade. And since so much of Americans' household wealth is wrapped up in homes, a significant amount of that wealth gap has been chalked up ...

A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste — you know the phrase, you've heard it.

That's because the iconic slogan, dreamt up by the advertising agency Young & Rubicam goes back more than four decades. It was meant to promote the United Negro College Fund scholarship program for black ...

On Tuesday, Vermont moved to decriminalize the possession of marijuana for quantities up to an ounce, replacing potential prison time for arrests with fines.

Peter Shumlin, the state's governor, made a telling distinction between weed and "harder" drugs when he announced the move. "This legislation allows our courts and ...

We recently found that single black men were much more likely to say they were looking for a long-term relationship (43 percent) compared to single black women (25 percent).

Those numbers come from our big poll of African-Americans' views of their lives and communities (the poll was conducted by ...

When Michelle Obama squared off with a heckler at a private fundraiser last night, the racial context was hard to ignore: a white woman yelling at the country's most visible black woman and that same black woman offering a pointed response.

The first lady has been enormously popular throughout ...

You might think African-Americans might be more pessimistic about their lives. The housing crisis decimated pockets of black wealth. The black unemployment rate has been nearly double the national average for several years.

But according to findings from our survey of more than 1,000 African-Americans, you'd be wrong.

A

When Arvind Mahankali won the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee last night, he became the sixth consecutive Indian-American winner and the 11th in the past 15 years.

Back in 1985, Balu Natarajan became the spelling bee's first Indian-American winner. (He won with "milieu" and acknowledged that the words have gotten ...

Sports-talk radio was abuzz Wednesday morning with some comments that Sergio Garcia, the professional golfer, made about his frequent foil, Tiger Woods.

"We'll have him 'round every night," Garcia said. "We will serve fried chicken."

The comment came after Garcia was asked if he would invite his rival, with whom ...

A federal court is set to decide on the lawfulness of stop-and-frisk, New York City's controversial policing strategy meant to stop gun violence. The policy gives police officers wide discretion to stop, question, and in some cases, pat down people they suspect are carrying illegal guns.

But the numbers ...

When President Obama stepped to the lectern on Sunday to address Morehouse College's graduating class, he gave exactly the kind of speech that you give at Morehouse. The president told the graduating students that they had been trained and nurtured to be leaders. He linked their personal and professional successes ...

OK, let's get this out of the way: Scandal is a ridiculous show.

The hit ABC drama about a Washington "fixer" named Olivia Pope just wrapped up its second season with one of its trademark cliffhangers.

(Assume spoilers, y'all.)

Scandal's plot arcs aren't really arcs so much as straight vertical ...

Never heard of the British singer-songwriter Laura Mvula? Oliver Wang over at All Things Considered suggests that you should fix that. And soon.

"It's not exactly pop or soul or jazz — it's all those things, but it transcends those things," Wang wrote.

And Wang isn't alone. Mvula's album ...

It's an old story: The straightest and surest path to becoming a big-time comedy star is by becoming a cast member or writer on Saturday Night Live. That was proved true again this week when Seth Meyers, SNL's head writer, was tapped to be the new host of NBC's Late ...

Early on Sunday morning, 40 or so members of the Original Big Seven Social Aid and Pleasure Club began their annual Mother's Day parade. The Original Big Seven, originally formed in a housing project that was torn down after Hurricane Katrina, is one of the city's big second-line groups. Second-lines ...

When Cleveland officials announced charges against Ariel Castro — the suspected kidnapper of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight — prosecutor Victor Perez wanted to make sure people knew where the city's "Puerto Rican community" stood.

"As the chief prosecutor for the city of Cleveland, born and raised ...

It's hard out here for a black man the Internet accidentally thrusts into the limelight. Those 15 minutes ain't no joke.

Charles Ramsey, the Cleveland man who helped Amanda Berry escape from her captor and free her fellow captives, is already a full-fledged Thing On The Internet, primarily owing ...

The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates has a comments section on his blog that's become renowned for its level of discourse. "I always tell people it's like a dinner party, and I try to host it that way," Coates told NPR's On The Media. "I try to keep the conversation ...