A message of reconciliation from Terry Crews, an African American actor and Christian, didn’t sit well with left-leaning groups who attacked him for hurting progress toward racial justice. “If you are a child of God, you are my brother and sister,” Crews tweeted on June 30. “I have family of every race, creed, and ideology. We must ensure #blacklivesmatter doesn’t morph into #blacklivesbetter.”

It’s hard to imagine that a few years ago a gauzy public statement in favor of free speech, boasting signatures from a host of left-wing luminaries such as Noam Chomsky, J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie, Gloria Steinem, and Fareed Zakaria, would have caused much of a stir. But last week, when Harper’s Magazine released a letter warning, “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted,” the backlash was swift and sharp.

The hit musical Hamilton promotes inclusivity, democracy, and the power of youth to change the world. But to get tickets to its original Broadway run in 2015, you had to have money and connections—or divine intervention.

After months of coronavirus lockdowns, baseball in July could be good medicine for Americans. But some players are opting not to participate in this year’s shortened season because of the ongoing risks of COVID-19.

Comedy legend Carl Reiner, the creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show, died on Monday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 98.

In 1889, Chris Rutt started using the name “Aunt Jemima” to market his pancake flour after he heard the song “Old Aunt Jemima” in a minstrel show. The shows usually featured white actors in blackface, but African American comedian Billy Kersands wrote and performed “Old Aunt Jemima.”

The opening sequence of the long-running reality show Cops used to call up images of men and women in badges going after criminals as a reggae group sang, “Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they come for you?” Now, in the wake of several high-profile deaths of African Americans involving police officers, activists are coming for shows that focus on law enforcement.