Those accused of misconduct, assault, and harassment have ranged from small actors to big-shot producers, but almost all were male. Almost, but not all: female singer Timothy Heller recently accused alternative pop singer Melanie Martinez of assaulting her.

Barack and Michelle’s chose two black artists to create their portraits for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery: Barack chose Brooklyn native Kehinde Wiley and Michelle chose Baltimore-based Amy Sherald.

Even though more women and people of color are featured in this season, the fact that they were added in and of itself doesn’t make the show more progressive.

For weeks now, our country’s culture of shaming and silencing survivors has once again been in the spotlight. In the wake of this revelation, many other instances of sexual assault in Hollywood have started make headlines, too.

Black women are supposed to relate to and admire these two-dimensional characters, but in reality their lives are multi-dimensional: they’re real people who face obstacles outside of combating racism. Most black girls have gained enough life experience by adolescence to understand that “black girls are pretty, too” and “racism is wrong.” What we’re still grappling with is that being a black girl is still really hard because while we may believe those messages, the people we interact with on a daily basis don’t necessarily understand or believe those messages. And, of course, we are dealing with that racism at the same time that we deal with the everyday problems any other complicated person does.

Detroit, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, takes place in the midst of the infamous 12th Street riot, which was sparked after the police raided an unlicensed club for African-American veterans in 1967....

Ava DuVernay has never been afraid to bring issues like race, the unjust U.S. “justice” system, mass incarceration, and the criminalization of African-Americans and other PoC to the forefront of her films. From the Oscar-winning film Selma to the highly acclaimed 2016 Netflix documentary 13th, DuVernay has examined how the criminal justice system is actively used as an oppressive tactic to repress and discriminate against the Black population....

In July of this year, Columbia University settled alleged rapist Paul Nungesser’s lawsuit against the school for gender-based discrimination. Nungesser was accused of raping then-fellow Columbia student Emma Sulkowicz, who gained attention for her 2014 performance-art piece Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight).