One thing that’s true for the Black community is that it will claim people who are not biologically related as relatives. This concept even applies to celebrities, particularly influential figures, who have massive admiration. One of the individuals who has walked into the fold as one of the culture’s internet aunties is Niecy Nash-Betts. Born Carol Denise Ensley, Niecy Nash-Betts has been the imaginative, joyful spirit the world has come to know and love from a very young age. According to the Los Angeles Times, Nash first found inspiration for her career’s future after seeing singer and dancer Lola Falana’s lavishness on television. At the tender age of 5, Nash-Betts would adorn herself in scarves, Mickey Mouse sunglasses, and fancy dresses. “I want to be Black, fabulous, and on TV,” she told her grandmother one day, according to the Los Angeles Times. “The Black part I couldn’t do anything about. But the fabulous and the being on TV … I got to work on that.” And the rest, as...

Netflix and Ava DuVernay’s “When They See Us” miniseries has had a major impact on our social atmosphere and altered the way society as a whole views our criminal justice system. However, for others, its impact included calling their careers and credibility into question. One of whom happened to be Linda Fairstein, the former prosecutor responsible for the convictions of the Exonerated Five. Fairstein is now taking legal action against Netflix and Ava DuVernay after making claims that the miniseries “defamed” her. Released in May 2019, the four-part miniseries chronicled the true events of the arrests, trials, convictions, and exonerations of five teenagers of color — Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise — who became known as the Exonerated Five. In the miniseries, Fairstein was portrayed as a power-hungry prosecutor directing officers to coerce false confessions out of the five then-teenagers, while detectives held them in questioning for...