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Lee Wesley Gibson, the Oldest Pullman Porter, Dies at 106
Lee Wesley Gibson, believed to have been the oldest living Pullman porter, died Saturday at his home, surrounded by family. He was 106 years old. “He had just celebrated his birthday five weeks earlier and he thanked everyone,” family friend Rosalind Stevenson told the Los Angeles Times. Gibson started working as a coach attendant with…
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Report: Race Relations in US Are Still Bad
Almost eight years after the election of the nation’s first black president, a new study finds that the racial divide between whites and blacks in America is still at Grand Canyon levels—which proves that a racially harmonious country remains an elusive dream that even the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would have had trouble envisioning.…
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Broken Bezels and Squashed Beef: The 10 Best and Worst BET Awards Moments
BET: So easy to make fun of, and yet black people still watch it. Thankfully, between the showings of Baby Boy and reruns of Eve, the network also gifts us with award shows. Beautiful, terrible, car-crash-quality-with-moments-of-spectacular-brilliance award shows. This Sunday, all of Twitter will be watching to see if BET delivers on its promise to…
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In Defense of #TeamLightSkin
It’s 1986, and I’m 10 years old on the blacktop at my elementary school. Several other classmates and I are using the monkey bars as a hoop and a tennis ball to shoot with. Before we begin our low-budget version of basketball, a familiar refrain goes around. “Who are you?” “I’m Michael Jordan,” one kid…
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Racist Seeking Racist: How the Internet Helped Create Dylann Roof
Before accused South Carolina church shooter Dylann Roof one year ago walked into Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, where parishioners welcomed him into their Bible study, he was “locked in his room looking up bad stuff on his computer,” Paige Mann, Roof’s former stepmother, told Time. “Something on the computer drew him in—this internet evil.” Roof…
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5 Reasons I Really Wanted Justin Bieber to Get His Ass Kicked
I don’t listen to the Biebs. He’s not my age group and I’m not his target audience, so therefore our paths have never crossed. But I totally get him as an archetype. He’s the newest white guy doing all the black-guy stuff. You know: the black-guy dancing, the black-vibrato singing, the black-guy swag. I get…
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Kimbo Slice and the Inglorious Path of Fleeting Glory
Kimbo Slice’s story was bound to end this way because America has always boxed with black men while wearing loaded gloves. Even when you’re bigger, faster, stronger and punching twice as hard, there’s always the risk of your Dickensian rise from poverty ending in tragedy because the American design, for many black people, is filled…
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Trump Watch: BuzzFeed Would Rather Be $1,300,000 Poorer Than Support Donald Trump
What’s going on inside #TeamTrump? Hell If Donald Trump knows! Clearly the presumptive Republican nominee won’t back down from anything, including his own racist comments against a federal judge with Mexican ancestry who is overseeing cases against Trump University. During what has been reported as a “chaotic” conference call Monday, Trump told surrogates to continue…
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The Illuminati Probably Didn’t Do It … Probably … and 4 Other Prince-Related Conspiracy Theories
In honor of Prince’s life, we here at The Root believe that the best gift we can give the late Purple One for his birthday, June 7, is to make sure his legacy doesn’t get tarnished. We don’t want Prince to become black Elvis, so we sent out a crack forensic team of investigators (me)…
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#WhitePrivilegeMuch: College Rapist Gets Light Sentence Because Prison Would Be Bad for Him
There is nothing scarier than a white man losing his power. Good thing Brock Turner won’t have to face the full weight of what that really means. If you haven’t already heard, Turner is the young white ex-Stanford University swimmer whose dreams are more precious than the woman he raped. On Jan. 17, 2015, Turner…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
