Erin Aubry Kaplan

Illustration by Shino Arihara Summer is not a time of year to start big undertakings. It can be a time when the groundwork laid in preceding months or years reaps big payoffs — the march on Washington, the resignation of Nixon, the recall election in California — but action in......

Photos by Ted Soqui When I was in college in the early ’80s and still yearning to be the dance-floor queen I never got to be in high school, my good friend Duane and I routinely took to the streets on a Friday or Saturday night in search of the......

Illustration By Shino Arihara This summer, my husband and I went to Washington, D.C., for the first time. I had never approached a visit to a city with such leeriness; flying past Texas to Washington felt like sailing into the heart of darkness. My lifelong curiosity about D.C. that began......

Illustration by Juan Alvarado Summer in L.A. took a little longer than usual to heat up this year, but last Thursday the scorch was on, and will more than likely continue through October. How fitting that it was also the day that opponents of Proposition 54, Ward Connerly’s latest anti-race......

Two weeks ago I wrote that the media covering the recent criminal trial of Jeremy Morse artificially toned down any comparisons between Donovan Jackson and Rodney King. Whether that was due to political correctness, historical amnesia, or an editorial effort to put a bland new twist on a volatile old......

Illustration by Shino Arihara One recent Saturday night, my friend Bernice invited me to accompany her to a birthday party for Ma Bessie, a quasi-mythic figure who lived somewhere in the Crenshaw area and, according to Bernice, had just turned 114. This was amazing enough to pique my reporter’s curiosity......

The culminating day of the Jeremy Morse trial was, in the words of a relatively modern blues saying, déjà vu all over again. Throughout the trial of the Inglewood police officer accused of assaulting teenager Donovan Jackson, the media have conspicuously downplayed the Rodney King comparison. But Monday’s final presentation......

Illustration by Shino Arihara Barely three months ago the City Council solemnly announced that South-Central would henceforth be known as South Los Angeles, a much-ado makeover that immediately reminded me of Kentucky Fried Chicken “becoming” KFC some years back — greasy stuff that’s been bad for generations gets a pared-down......

Illustration by Shino Arihara A suggestion: If Jayson Blair gets hauled into court, The New York Times should get hauled in right behind him. I offer this blanket condemnation not to flagellate the Times further for the Blair debacle, but to establish some context about truth telling that’s been largely......