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Today in Obama: Turkey With a Side of Dad Jokes
In which we reflect on simpler times. If you wanted a side of nostalgia on your Thanksgiving plate, we at The Root are here to serve. Let’s go back to 2015—when the first family served Thanksgiving meals to homeless and at-risk veterans in Washington, D.C. If this picture looks familiar, it may be because the…
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Trump’s Top Pick to Head Census Is Pro-Gerrymandering Professor Who Thinks Black People Are Overcounted
Voting and immigration-rights advocates are alarmed over Donald Trump’s leading pick to head the U.S. Census Bureau: a conservative college professor with no government experience who literally wrote a book expounding on the dangers of competitive elections. According to Politico, Trump wants to tap Thomas Brunell, a political science professor at the University of Texas…
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Justice Department Threatens to Sue Harvard Over Race-Based Admissions Practices
The Trump administration is squaring up for its first major legal challenge over affirmative action, as documents obtained by CNN indicate. The news network, which shared copies of the documents on its site, confirms that the Department of Justice is actively investigating Harvard’s use of race in its admissions decisions. The letters, which come from…
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Tennessee Judge Who Offered Freedom in Exchange for Sterilization Receives Mild Reprimand
A Tennessee judge who drew widespread condemnation this past summer for offering vasectomies in exchange for lighter jail sentences has been formally reprimanded. Judge Sam Benningfield of White County told repeat drug offenders in his court that he would cut their sentences by 30 days if they would sign up for sterilization. For male inmates,…
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I Tried It: A Night at the Opera
If I had to guess about my first real introduction to opera, it was back in the Napster days. I was in high school, and like many other kids who knew how to use the internet at that time, I was frequently solicited with musical requests once my parents got wind that there was a…
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Good Samaritan Killed While Trying to Help Distressed Motorist as Twin Sister Looks On
Twin sisters Marcasia and Markwonda Crenshaw were returning home to South Florida Sunday night when they saw a van parked on the inside lane of Interstate 95. Concerned, they pulled over to make sure the driver of the van was OK. It would be a fateful decision. Marcasia, 25, was struck and killed by a…
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Come Drink at Britt McHenry’s Fountain of White Tears Over Colin Kaepernick’s Citizen of the Year Recognition
We told you Monday that many a wypipo was big mad over Colin Kaepernick’s selection as GQ’s Citizen of the Year for 2017, but arguably no one was saltier than ex-ESPN reporter and tow truck victims’ advocate Britt McHenry. Perhaps because she’s got a lot more time on her hands now, McHenry hosed Twitter with…
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Jeff Sessions Has Another Chance to Lie His Ass Off Before Congress
Another day, another opportunity to perjure your damn self. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is speaking before the House Judiciary Committee again Tuesday about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But Sessions—the man Coretta Scott King warned us was too racist to be a federal judge, let alone attorney general—will have a little help…
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Today in White Nonsense: Woman Claims She’s ‘Transracial,’ Identifies as Filipino
Dear white people: Why are you like this? A white transgender woman from New Orleans has come out to a Tampa Bay TV station to claim that she is “transracial.” Ja Du says she now considers herself to be a Filipino. Ahhh, right, because that’s what 2017 needed: more shades of white nonsense. And why…
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Colin Kaepernick Is GQ’s Citizen of the Year Without Having to Say a Damn Thing
It’s long been clear that Colin Kaepernick has become a bigger hero off the football field than he ever was on it. In a year that has seen the ripple effects of the quarterback’s 2016 national anthem protests against racial injustice (protests that effectively barred him from playing the sport again but that have become…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
