From EurWeb

Tony Award nominee Condola Rashad will star opposite Orlando Bloom in a new Broadway run of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, but this time the bitter divide between the Montagues and Capulets will be underscored by their different ethnicities.

Five-time Tony nominee David Leveaux will direct the staging, also set to feature Jayne Houdyshell (Follies) as Juliet’s Nurse, and Joe Morton (Raisin) as her father, Lord Capulet, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The production will begin previews August 24 at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, with official opening set for Sept. 19. Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy was last presented on Broadway in 1977.

Check out the details of this modern project on Eurweb.com.

Source: Shutterstock

By Jada Gomez-Lacayo

At its core, Thanksgiving is meant to be a holiday devoted to the convergence of traditions, but we all know the actual occasion was a lot more tumultuous than history’s popular flowery retelling of events. The truth is Native Americans shared maize while dinner guests (New England colonists) brutally conquered and destroyed their lands. But rest assured your Thanksgiving feast, no matter the racial breakdown, can only go up from there. In fact, it’s probably safe to say things won’t get much rowdier than a drunk uncle – eventually.

Holidays can get tense when families come together period (peep the issues we talked about yesterday) and thanks to my racially unorthodox family, the holidays at my house couldn’t be any more different. My family unknowingly provided me with lifelong lessons that would not only shape my opinions on race, but also taught me how to make everyone comfortable with one basic thing, laughing at themselves. Honestly, the best way to enjoy the holidays without ruffling any ethnically sensitive feathers (pun intended) is to simply have fun with it.

Obviously, my family and I weren’t joining hands and singing “We Are The World” from the start. Even when I was very young, I sensed the uncomfortable vibes at early family gatherings. I noticed that the elders in my family had to make the most adjustments, and were subsequently the ones who transformed the most. My Abuela barely spoke English when I was a child, and she was just getting accustomed to the fact that all of her sons would not marry Puerto Rican women, as she had hoped, when I arrived. Her husband was a Puerto Rican Nationalist, and their children would be slapped for speaking English in the home. Talk about an adjustment when her youngest granddaughter at the time turned out to be a curly haired, bronze-toned girl who didn’t like pernil.

My other grandma, an African American woman who grew up in Harlem, was just as weary of her new relatives, often remarking, “That woman doesn’t like me. She’s always speaking Spanish when I come around!” Of course she’d never mention this until non-African American family members pulled out of the parking lot, and she could confide in the safe confines of her side of the family. Regardless, I was keenly aware of the awkwardness and innately became a mediator because I desperately wanted these two women whom I loved deeply to love each other just the same. But while there may have been a huge language barrier, one thing was universal: they both loved good food. Abuelita cooks a pot of rice that’s yet to be duplicated, while my granduncle on the other side who was an army chef during World War II has a Mississippi-bred ribs recipe that is still uncontested. Quickly, I caught on to that and became a non-driving valet of sorts at the front door. I would run as quickly as my 3-year-old legs would allow to the kitchen to tell my granduncle that Abuela had arrived with her castor iron pots, signaling a delicious pot of rice was on the way, and I’d let Abuela know as soon as there were ribs on the premises. Eventually nobody’s language, skin color, or nationality mattered.

Two decades later, as new nationalities and cousins made it to the dinner table, like my Italian aunt who makes us a newer version of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, our family racial dynamic has become far less relevant. Laughter and loud chatter now fill those tense moments of the past, and instead we embrace the stereotypes we used to whisper, like:

“She’s the lightest thing in the house.”

or

“Let me return this baby to her mother so the cops don’t think I kidnapped her.”

or

“You know Puerto Ricans sleep with everyone.”

What we learned is the best way to dispel the differences was to just confront them head on, and honesty — and liquor — made our family gatherings unique and memorable instead of uncomfortable and unforgettable for the wrong reasons. Most importantly, the diversity at the dinner table affected each of our interactions outside of our home, making us more accepting of all nationalities.

If there will be new family members at your dinner table this holiday season, it’s probably not the greatest idea to start with the upfront, “you know all ____ do ____” talk right away, but if there’s ever an opportunity to have a light laugh about an unfamiliar tradition from a member of the family that’s different from yourself, now would be the time.

How do Thanksgiving dinners with your racially blended families usually turn out?

Jada Gomez-Lacayo is the Entertainment Editor for StyleBlazer.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JadaGomez.

*Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

We were expecting a more mixed response to our MOS question this week (would your parents approve of an interracial relationship?) but much to our surprise, many New Yorkers had a similar response to the question. Check out to see what they had to say, and answer the question for us in the comments section. We’d like to know!

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Remember when things got messy around the time we learned Kobe and Vanessa Bryant were getting a divorce and rumors tried to make Sanaa Lathan out to be a homewrecker because she was seen dancing around Kobe at the Watch the Throne Concert?

At the time, Sanaa shut down the gossip on Twitter, saying:

“Anybody who pays attention knows I’m not his type… Blank stare.”

But now she wants to take it back. She told Ebony she regrets making that comment in the heat of the moment:

“I probably shouldn’t have said that because I don’t discriminate when it comes to dating. I have dated all races and I believe you should be free to do whatever you want.

“I was so annoyed because I was having such a great time at the concert and Kobe happened to be standing next to me, and then all of a sudden I was tied to his break-up. That’s absurd, and I tweeted that in the moment, and I regret it.”

I personally don’t see anything wrong with what she said but maybe she thinks her shade wasn’t becoming of a Pantene spokesmodel. You tell me.

Did you see anything wrong with what Sanaa said or was she just telling the truth?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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A poster from the Democratic Alliance in South Africa’s Youth wing depicting a naked white man and black woman with the tagline “In OUR future, you wouldn’t look twice,” is causing some people to do much more than that in the present.

Most have been supportive of the alliance’s message of racial tolerance and integration, but others say they don’t approve of the sexual innuendo, much less the implication of white male dominance, as the Washington Post points out in comment found on the organization’s Facebook page:

“Who is the head of a house? Yes, a man, and the man makes the choices and the women listens. So to some it has been offensive that the man is white and the woman is black, because it places the black nation under the head of the house, so to speak.”

South Africa’s trade-union congress, which is closely aligned with the government, had a much stronger response:

“The poster says, ‘Join the DA to have an affair with a white person,’” Zet Luzipo, a provincial secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, told a South African news service.

“It entrenches the white supremacy that we fought against during the liberation struggle. We will not be excited with having an affair with a white person; we will not be enticed by that.”

Those who support DA Youth’s mission say this image has opened up a conversation that the country should have had nearly 20 years ago, and the alliance is standing strong in defense of the poster as well.

“We will not defend people who try to force others to comply with their preferences when those preferences show intolerance, unkindness, lack of imagination, failure of sympathy, absence of understanding, ignorance of alternative interests and needs in the human experience and arrogance in believing theirs is the only acceptable way.”

Sounds like the alliance is prepared for a fight.

Do you understand people being offended by the poster or do you think some are reading too much into the image?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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Black love is wonderful, but so is all types of love. In this edition of couples we love, we highlight four of our favorite Hollywood interracial couples, who’ve stood the test of time. We can only hope that Halle Berry has this much luck with her soon-to-be hubby (who cares if it’s not official) Oliver Martinez.

Aisha Tyler and Jeff Tietjens

Aisha Tyler married her husband, attorney Jeff Tietjens in 1992, and they have been going strong ever since. What makes their story extra sweet is that they met in college at Dartmouth. At 41, Aisha is yet to have kids with her hubby. With her busy schedule, co-hosting on The Talk and running her podcast “Girl on Guy,” we don’t know when she’ll have the time.

I always thought the comments about light-skinned dudes coming back in style were just light-hearted jokes that really went out of style when the men did back in the 80s. From my perspective, tall, dark-skinned, and handsome has long been viewed as a black (or any other) woman’s dream. Yeah, Shemar Moore had his run and lots of women love Michael Ealy, but the fanfare doesn’t compare to the admiration for Idris Elba (praise ‘em), Morris Chestnut (yes lord), or Tyson Beckford (let the church say Amen).

Taye Diggs is another actor who has been admired for his chocolaty goodness—particularly after his debut in “How Stella Got Her Groove Back,” although I personally enjoyed him most in “Brown Sugar.” But despite the love the mocha-skinned author of Chocolate Me, a children’s book encouraging kids to accept themselves as they are, has received over the years, he says it took him a long time to become comfortable in his own dark skin.

“When I got into high school I started to hear, just from the black community, everybody is more attracted to the light skin girls and the light skin dudes with the light eyes. And from within the race the light skin black people and lighter brown people would make fun of the darker people. So then it was a completely different kind of struggle, Taye told MyBrownBaby.Com.

“And then funnily enough it was when dark skinned men, and this was just from my perspective, there seemed to be a shift where all of a sudden we saw Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes, Tyson Beckford. I’m still trying to figure out how this came to be. For me, when I saw Tyson Beckford hailed as this beautiful man by all people, that caused a shift in my being. And I remember literally waking up and walking the streets feeling a little bit more proud. And then after the movie “How Stella Got Her Groove Back,” when I had my own personal moments of weakness, I just had to remind myself of all the people that really enjoyed that movie and just kind of lean on that.

I was surprised by Taye’s comments; sort of in the same way it’s shocking to find out a beautiful woman has low self-esteem. You wonder, how could he not see himself as gorgeous when 99% of those around him do, but you realize self-confidence is strictly an internal mindset not based on external compliments and men struggle with self-esteem issues just like women. Still, I’d thought if black men had any sort of color complex, it was related to how they choose women, not so much how they felt about themselves. But maybe it’s all connected. Do dark-skinned men favor light-skinned women because by being with a lighter skinned woman, it somehow makes them more attractive or socially acceptable in their minds? A friend of mine always says she thinks black men’s propensity to date outside their race has to do with self-hatred. Maybe being with a white woman gives some dark-skinned men a boost of esteem that’s even greater than being with a light-skinned black woman. If so, Taye Diggs could certainly fit the bill.

But I’m not as interested in men’s interracial dating choices as I am how their color affects their sense of self-worth. After all, light-skinned men date outside their race too and are obsessed with redbones just like everyone else, and lord knows some think they are God’s gift to women just because they have a little less melanin. I guess it isn’t so hard to see how a dark-skinned man could feel the exact opposite. Still, this is an issue that’s mostly been limited to black women’s experience, most recently in the documentary “Dark Girls,” because there is so much pressure put on all women to fit a very narrow standard of beauty, and black women especially struggle with being accepted outside of that realm. Taye’s remarks remind us that men can be insecure too, and although a lot of women may see a handsome, chocolate man as an Adonis, he might not see himself in that same light at all.

What do you think about Taye Diggs’ comments? Do you think dark-skinned men struggle with feeling accepted aesthetically as much as darker skinned black women? Do you think this issue has any bearing on who they date?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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So the other day, I was on YouTube going down the rabbit hole of natural hair “how-to” styling videos when I came across this one gem called “Parents of Biracial Children Please Learn Hair Care Before Their Birth.” After I stopped laughing at the title, I was able to focus on the content of the video, which basically featured a black woman, with sunglasses (while indoors I might add) seated in front of a white man named Bob, who was destructively combing through her naps with a small-tooth comb (Yikes). The author of the video, which was posted by tag name Slapme77times a couple of years ago, was trying to make a point about the need for White parents to learn the hair texture of African American hair prior to birthing or adopting one into the family. However, watching Bob, who incidentally was holding the comb like one would a knife, painstakingly rake through her hair, I wondered if this was a big enough issue to warrant a tutorial video on the matter?

The short answer is: Yes.  It’s like the other taboos of interracial relationships that everyone thinks about but don’t want to discuss.  While folks may swoon over how Black and White people may make pretty babies, one thing that they can’t do is come together to achieve a decent head of hair for those kids.  And I’m not referring to the texture but the actual application or lack thereof of styling and maintenance.  You know, the real “good hair.”

I’m not saying that all non-black parents of mixed-race children are oblivious to hair maintenance but a large percentage of folks do have trouble. Look, I get it: doing somebody else’s hair, particularly someone of another or ethnicity, is not something most of us think about.

And yes, we do spend a great deal of time in our lives just getting to know our own hair. But when I’m out in the suburbs and see a mixed race child, maybe age six or seven, walking around with dry, brittle wiry hair or when I’m up in the richer part of the city watching a black child being scooted along in one of those older kid strollers by a couple of white parents, my first inclination is that the parents are just lazy or in some dire need of help – especially when the child’s hair has been hacked to the point that any attempts of gender identification are futile. It may not be the most politically correct thing to say but I don’t think we should sweep it under the rug.

“How come she’s so white and you’re so dark?” The question tore through Heather Greenwood as she was about to check out at a store here one afternoon this summer. Her brown hands were pushing the shopping cart that held her babbling toddler, Noelle, all platinum curls, fair skin and ice-blue eyes. The question tore through Heather Greenwood as she was about to check out at a store here one afternoon this summer. Her brown hands were pushing the shopping cart that held her babbling toddler, Noelle, all platinum curls, fair skin and ice-blue eyes.

Read More…

There’s one thing white America never has to worry about and that’s a white man making a point about how undesirable the female members of his ethncity are. For the latest spectacle of self hate, we turn to Washington Redskins player Albert Haynesworth who was recently indicted on one charge of sexual abuse, having been accused of fondling a cocktail’ waitresses breast.

According to the indictment, Haynesworth told a security guard, “I didn’t touch her” and that the waitress was “a little black girl” and he “doesn’t even like black girls.” Later, according to the indictment, Hanyesworth told detectives “I know what this is about, she is just upset I have a white girlfriend. I couldn’t tell you the last time I dated a black girl. She was trying to get with me.” (Source: dcentric.wamu.org)

Although people tend to make rash remarks when feeling defensive, why does it seem that Black women are so attacked by their men? What if the accuser had been a white woman? She probably would’ve been called a Itchbay, end of story. But Haynesworth had to take it there and really convey his dislike for his sisters. White women are never demonized in these narratives, since they are simply accepted of being representative of all women. But Black women, over and over again, absorb very specific attacks in the media and in everday life. Sadly, Black men are not always there to defend their women,which is not the case amongst other cultures and ethnicities.