“And then the paddy rollers came, and they threw me in a ditch.” For most of my mother’s life, she held on to this puzzling fragment of conversation from her paternal great-grandmother, Nancy Scott. Mrs. Scott lived into her 90s. And when she was very old she held my mother, Cynthia, on her knee, and…

(The Root) — Dear Shawn Carter: I just read your heated blog posting about “negligent, erroneous reports and attacks on my character, intentions, and the spirit of this collaboration” with the retailer Barneys, with whom you are partnering. Barneys, of course, is the store where a young man was arrested for quite legally buying a…

In a piece at her blog, Farai.com, Farai Chideya explores questions that have bedeviled President Barack Obama and Congress in the smoldering debate over Syria. She blends issues of morality (When is killing justified?) with those of national interest (Will intervention help America?). Let’s parse out a few of these different lines, and who espouses them.…

Arguing that diversity is “critical for good journalism,” Farai Chideya, at her blog, Farai.com, writes an open letter congratulating new Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos on his acquisition and stressing the importance of a heterogeneous staff. As I outlined in a recent article for The Nation magazine, staffing and editorial diversity is critical for good journalism, and…

The Root Contributing Editor Farai Chideya, in a piece for the Huffington Post, calls single black mothers Tiger Moms and applauds them for overcoming challenges to raise strong black men and women . I’m not a great satirist, and what my family achieved is too serious to get that tonality wrong. My father and mother split…

Saying that we are witnessing the resegregation of the American media, Farai Chideya delivers an incisive piece at the Nation about the face of journalism today. When I was a kid, my family loved watching science fiction films and television shows. Some of them, from Star Trek to Soylent Green, featured a multiracial band of…

(The Root) — Seventeen-year-old Mareshia Rucker knows her mind and is not afraid to speak it. She’s one of the racially mixed group of student organizers who are putting together the first integrated prom at Wilcox County High School in Georgia, roughly a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Atlanta. She told The Root recently that the school,…

(The Root) — UPDATED Wednesday, April 10, 2013, at 2:45 EDT: An adviser to the students, Harriet Hollis of the Southwest Georgia Project for Community Education, told Farai Chideya that the students are planning a more private celebration. The Root will bring you more soon about their plans and how they are choosing to make…