Gene Demby

Even before the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., or the Eric Garner incident in New York City last summer, Charles Ramsey, Philadelphia's police commissioner, called on the federal government to look into how the officers in his department used force, and how their use of force might contribute to the department's ...

What do Fox's runaway hit Empire and booming sales of Goya rice and beans have in common? They're examples of the growing clout a segment of hyper-engaged, hyperconnected consumers of color, according to a new report from Nielsen.

The consumer research company calls them "multicultural superconsumers" — ...

Over at Colorlines, Julianne Hing has an essay on Off The Menu: Asian America, a new documentary on the spread of Asian-American cultures through the spread of Asian cuisine. The film's director, Grace Lee, follows chefs and food companies that are remixing their recipes for broader American appetites ...

Jackie Robinson is a household name, a book report staple, an American hero. News of his 1947 debut in the major leagues appeared on the front page of the New York Times, above the fold. Fifty years after he first took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers, teams across the ...

You're on the Internet, which means you're never more five seconds away from someone claiming you squashed their First Amendment rights by, say, blocking them on Twitter.

Repeat after me: the First Amendment prohibits citizens' speech from being infringed upon by the government.* But because the universe delights in dark ...

It wasn't supposed to be "Leonard Nimoy + Biracial Kids Day" here at Code Switch, but the news takes you where it takes you.

BuzzFeed's Leonora Epstein uncovered this blog post from the blog My Star Trek Scrapbook, which features a letter from a 1968 issue ...

Leonard Nimoy, the beloved actor who played Mr. Spock in the Star Trek franchise, died Friday at the age of 83. There's a lot to write about Nimoy's life — our colleague Neda Ulaby has a nice remembrance here — and there will almost certainly be more to ...

The number of people who identify as belonging to two or more races keeps climbing with each Census. The number of people identified as both black and white, for example, more than doubled between 2000 and 2010, from about 780,000 to 1.8 million.

A closer look at where this ...

A closely watched case before the Supreme Court Wednesday could have big consequences for religious rights in the workplace. It involves Abercrombie & Fitch, the preppy, mall-based retailer, and a young Muslim woman who wore a headscarf to a job interview at the company seven years ago.

The case

American Samoans are in a very peculiar political limbo: Unlike on any other patch of U.S. soil in the world, children born on the small Pacific Islands are not automatically granted American citizenship. They are U.S. nationals, but not U.S. citizens.

Leneuoti Tuaua, one of the plaintiffs in a case ...

Earlier this week, the board of trustees at Clemson University in South Carolina decided not to change the name of the school's iconic clock tower, Tillman Hall, despite protests by grad students and professors. It's named after Benjamin Tillman, who was a South Carolina governor and a ...

Last week, South Carolina lawmakers proposed shutting down the state's only public historically black college for two years.

"We are looking at a bankrupt institution," state House Rep. Jim Merrill told reporters. "No one takes any pleasure in recommending this."

And indeed, the school is in rough shape. It ...

The long-running debate over what's driving the country's staggering (and ongoing) drop in crime just got more complicated. With a major new report, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU has effectively squashed one popular theory: throwing massive amounts of people in prison did not bring down crime.

"At ...

Last week, New York City's police commissioner Bill Bratton went before state lawmakers and asked them to raise the penalty for resisting arrest from a misdemeanor to a felony.

"We need to get around this idea that you can resist arrest," he later told reporters. "It results in potential ...

A D.C. charter school founded by and located at Howard University has been embroiled for days in an increasingly public fight over the firing of three teachers, Parents and students claim the teachers were dismissed for teaching Black History Month lessons, they've mobilized in protest, and social media is abuzz. ...

By now, you've surely seen Jonathan Chait's sprawling takedown of what he describes as a dangerous resurgence of political correctness in the 21st century. In his telling, a PC culture that flourished on college campuses in the 90's is back, stronger than ever thanks to Twitter and social media, ...

When Chenjerai Kumanyika sat down to record his first public radio piece last summer, he was thrown off by his own voice.

He didn't sound like Sarah Koenig of Serial or Roman Mars of 99 % Invisible. They sounded wonderful, Kumanyika thought. "They also ...

At the end of Selma, the new movie about a pivotal campaign in the Civil Rights Movement, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (played by David Oyelowo) rises to address a crowd in front of a courthouse.

It's a recreation of the moment in which King gave one of his

James Estrin of the New York Times' Lens blog and his colleagues have become fixated on a old, recently rediscovered old photo taken by Gordon Parks, the legendary Life magazine photographer. So they've put out a call to their readers for any helpful info about it.

Here's what ...

In the aftermath of the massacre Wednesday at Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French magazine, there are obviously big questions about the attackers, their motives and what it might mean for French society. For more of NPR's coverage of the attack and of Charlie Hebdo, check out the Two-Way.