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Psst! Here's a Cheat Sheet for the US-Africa Leaders Summit
Africa’s coming to town. And in a big way. Africa’s movers and shakers are in Washington, D.C., this week to chop it up with President Barack Obama about trade and investment opportunities, politics and the U.S.’s interests in the region’s stability. The 2014 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit is the largest gathering of African presidents and leaders…
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Eric Garner’s Death Ruled a Homicide by NYC Medical Examiner
All those who want justice for Eric Garner—the Staten Island, N.Y., father who died after New York City police officers placed him in a choke hold during an arrest—will be relieved by this update. According to the Daily News, the New York City medical examiner has declared Garner’s death a homicide—by choke hold. Some of…
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All the Times Eric Holder Kept It Completely 100
It was nothing for Attorney General Eric Holder to tell ABC News that Sarah Palin “wasn’t a particularly good vice presidential candidate” and for him to suggest, in his own way, that she ought to read the Constitution before proposing that President Barack Obama be impeached—seeing as how there would be no legal basis for…
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Career Spotlight: Park Ranger Shelton Johnson on Why Spending Time Outdoors Is About Civil Rights
“You shouldn’t have to convince people to go to paradise,” 55-year-old Shelton Johnson says in the short documentary The Way Home: Returning to the National Parks. “But if I could go to paradise without dying, and see all that is there, sign me up,” he continued. “And Yosemite for many people is such a place.” Shelton,…
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People Who Are Not Invited to The Root’s 4th of July Barbecue
The invitations to our annual Fourth of July barbecue have gone out (did you get yours?), and there are a couple of people who didn’t make the list this year. Don’t get us wrong: It’s not that we dislike these individuals. We just think that their time would be better served tending to more important…
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1994 Harvard Student: Nigeria’s Democratic President Was Overthrown. He Was My Dad. Here's Why the U.S. Did Nothing.
Hafsat Abiola was walking on campus one day in 1994 as a student at Harvard University when she was summoned by a group of students who were collecting signatures for a petition. “There’s an elected president in jail in Nigeria and we’re gathering signatures to demand his release,” one of them said to her.…
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11 Dope Hip-Hop Lyrics That Give Props to Africa
Hip-hop has always served as a compass for showing the direction that urban culture has taken on a variety of issues—and Africa is no exception. Although, the Motherland has always been a tricky topic for U.S. audiences to embrace. Mainstream America was fed a steady diet of images featuring naked tribal men living alongside lions,…
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The Annoyingly Effective Ways African and Caribbean Parents Get Their Kids to Get A’s
Social media have been inundated with news reports about those brilliant high school students who gained admission to a boatload of Ivy League schools. That many of them are first-generation black Americans (children whose parents come from countries in Africa or the Caribbean) made headlines, too. Not to mention that “Tiger Mom” Amy Chua put…
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Old-School Beefs Revisited
It’s reassuring to see high-profile black people engage in debates about compelling and complicated issues. In a way, it shows that their money hasn’t made them complacent or detached from the realities of ordinary life. Jay Z and Harry Belafonte don’t see eye to eye on how wealthy blacks ought to empower the communities they…
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6 Lesser-Known Facts About Brown v. Board
Brown v. Board of Education—the landmark Supreme Court ruling that desegregated public schools—turns 60 this year, and if someone were tasked with identifying the most interesting parts of the case in order to repurpose it for a Law & Order special, what would that episode look like? Who were the major characters? Which one of…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
