Courtney Young's Posts

Breaking News: Lindsay Lohan Benefits from White Privilege!

Last week, actress Regina King expressed chagrin in The Huffington Post at the lack of diversity at the 2010 Emmys. Earlier this year, Vanity Fair’s now-infamous all-white “young Hollywood” cover evinced that women of color are still completely marginalized in film. I thought about these events when I read yesterday that a bidding war of [...]

Oscar Grant and LeBron James: What Would bell hooks Have Said?

I thought about bell hooks on July 8 as basketball star LeBron James made the highly publicized announcement that he would be playing with the Miami Heat. That same day the verdict was read against Johannes Mehserle, the cop who shot and killed Oscar Grant, an unarmed young black man. That day marked critical turning [...]

Farewell to Ms. Lena

“You have to be taught to be second class; you’re not born that way”, is just one of the many Lena Horne aphorisms that traversed through social networking sites yesterday at the news of the pioneer’s passing. President Barack Obama, Bill Cosby, Janet Jackson and millions of citizens across the globe felt the weight of [...]

Experiencing Erykah Badu’s “Window Seat”

Folks can’t stop talking about Erykah Badu’s minimalist, one-person-crew video effort for her newest song “Window Seat.” Shot in a single take, guerilla-style, Badu trailed the route of President John F. Kennedy at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, simultaneously shedding all her clothes until she reached the place where Kennedy was shot, then she collapsed to the [...]

What Can We Do About Colorism?

As a woman of color who is deeply concerned and invested in interrogating the ways in which women continue to be marginalized, I’ve often wondered why more work hasn’t been done on the issue of colorism, both domestically and globally. Not only has it played a tremendous role in the beauty myths that imperil women [...]

Thumbs Down on Jessica Simpson’s “Beauty”

By now, many have heard of (or seen) Jessica Simpson’s new Vh1 reality series The Price of Beauty.  The premise of the show: Simpson and her best friends Ken and CaCee visit various countries to discover what each considers beautiful, finding out in the process the extreme lengths that women, in particular, will go to [...]

On the 97th Year Since Harriet Tubman Died

In children’s books, scholarly texts, popular culture and any Black History Month curriculum, Harriet Tubman is a fixture, and rightfully so: Her bravery still astounds. Born a slave in Maryland during 1822, the adolescent Tubman (then Araminta Ross) suffered a blow to her head from a cruel overseer, as a result suffering  seizures, headaches and [...]

Mo’Nique, Bigelow + Oscar: Mixed Feelings

This season’s Academy Awards race, ending with last night’s historic ceremony, was without a doubt the ripest, richest Oscar period in recent memory for popular culture critics to sink their teeth into. A myriad of complex issues relating to gender, race, class and representation were thrust into the public space. Three of the ten Best [...]