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Black Women Breaking the Silence: A Candid Conversation With the Women of HBO Max's On The Record
“It has come time that we are able to parse our fandom from our celebrity heroes apart from their very real flawed human selves if and when it calls for that. And I think that young people are closer to the idea of deconstructing celebrity culture in a way that we don’t have to have…
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This Is How Black Joy and Resistance Triumphed Over White Supremacy at D.C.'s Unite The Right Rally
White supremacists behind the original Unite the Right rally that terrorized Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 with violent protests, decided to have another riveting event. This time, in our nation’s capital. But the group was dwarfed by counter-protestors. This is their story. “The Black Lives Matter movement is such a place of hope and faith. To…
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White Producers Threw W. Kamau Bell to the KKK on Day 1, so He Got Rid of Them
W. Kamau Bell’s United Shades of America became infamous for its first episode, “The New KKK,” in 2016. In the series opener, Bell attends a cross-burning ceremony and interviews hooded Klansmen. At the end of the cross burning, Bell poignantly states, “I actually feel lucky. Unlike most of the black people in this country who…
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Stop Calling Us ‘Females’ for Real, Though
The past few weeks have been a shit show. Between Kanye’s “free thoughts” and news about Nas, Bill Cosby and R. Kelly, we’ve been inundated with anti-black, misogynistic and overall trash takes disguised as “unpopular opinions.” Men and women alike are defending people like Kelly and Cosby for their decades’ worth of sexual abuse allegations.…
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Watch: The Café That Discriminated Against W. Kamau Bell Just Shut Down, but the Storm’s Not Over
W. Kamau Bell was chatting with his wife, his baby girl and his wife’s friends at an outdoor table of the Elmwood Cafe in Berkeley, Calif., when an employee assumed that he was “harassing” them. This happened on Jan. 26, 2015, his birthday. According to Bell, the employee knocked on the window from the inside…
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Watch: To Understand How Harmful Juvenile Incarceration Is, Listen to This Poem
In a spoken-word poem, Dwayne Betts details the emotional impacts of juvenile incarceration. In partnership with WNYC Studios, we present Caught. #CaughtPodcast
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Watch: More Black Children Are Turning to Suicide, so What Can We Do About It?
Ashawnty Davis attempted to take her own life by hanging in November 2017. Two weeks later, the 10-year-old succumbed to her injuries. Days after Ashawnty’s death, 8-year-old Imani McCray hanged herself in her New Jersey home. And weeks earlier, 11-year-old Rylan Thai Hagan hanged himself from the bunk bed in his family’s Washington, D.C., home.…
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Watch: Police Released Footage of Stephon Clark’s Killing, but Will It Help Bring Justice?
There are a lot of questions running through my mind after I reluctantly watched the execution of yet another unarmed black man by police. How can a white iPhone be mistaken for a gun? Why were 20 shots fired at an unarmed man in a matter of seven seconds? Why did officers continue to yell,…
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Watch: This Is What It’s Like to Be a Black Girl in a White Ballet World
Isabella Soto has big dreams of becoming a principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre. “I saw The Nutcracker when I was 2 years old and I said I really want to do this,” said the 11-year-old. By age 5, Isabella had already realized there weren’t many dancers who looked like her in the world…
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Watch: Lena Waithe Is Black and Unapologetic in the Writers’ Room
“I always wanna be a Muhammad Ali, a Colin Kaepernick. I’d rather lose a check and stand up for righteousness than to sit on my pile of money while my people are suffering.” —Lena Waithe The Root 100 honoree Lena Waithe made history earlier this year when she became the first black woman to win…
