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Tech Needs to Do the Work to Find Black Excellence, but You Can Do Your Part, Too
The Uber fallout of recent weeks makes something my grandmother used to tell me more important than ever now: “To get something you don’t have, you’ll have to do something you haven’t done. You’re a black woman. So, to do that, you’ll have to work twice as hard to get half as far.” However, the…
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7 Times Harriet Tubman Was a Badass Superhero
Harriet Tubman is having a moment. Right now she is the “it” girl of history. No longer relegated to the pages of schoolbooks during Black History Month, the freedom-fighting, self-liberating she-warrior and “conductor” on the Underground Railroad is getting the recognition she so richly deserves. Last year the Treasury Department announced that Tubman would replace…
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Watch: SNL’s Skit About Drugs That Sound Like Black Names Is Just Dumb, Racist Trash
Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer made her debut as host of Saturday Night Live last night. I’ll confess I missed it because I had better things to do on a Saturday night. But then this dumb-ass skit of Spencer playing a woman who’s suing a drug company because they stole the names of her family…
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The Black Viewer’s Guide to the Grammys
Stuck between the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards, the Grammys have always seemed like the red-headed stepchild of the awards season. But I always look forward to the Grammys because the show always seems less uptight than awards shows that focus on movies and TV, and it’s also a chance to see some of…
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The Day My Mother Asked About My HIV Status Changed My Life
I will never forget the day my mother asked me, “Is there something you want me to know about you?” Mom wanted to know if I had HIV. She had just attended her first HIV educational program. She learned about the virus and how important being in care is to ensure that a person with…
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My Black History: When Magic Johnson Announced That He Had HIV, It Was a Wake-Up Call
Editor’s note: During Black History Month, the focus is usually on historical figures who loomed larger than life, paving the way for the progress we experience today. But black history isn’t just about telling stories of our past. History is being made every day and has been made throughout our lives; it’s not just in…
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#OscarsSoBlack: Finally, Some Melanin-Proficient People Receive Nominations
After two straight years of #OscarsSoWhite, in which black actors were shut out of all the acting categories, this year’s Academy Awards nominations featured so much blackness, some racist trolls on Twitter might just start calling the Oscars the BET Awards. Moonlight, director Barry Jenkins’ stunning coming-of-age tale, received a total of eight nominations (the…
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An Elegy for Obama
I am in mourning. As the presidency of Barack Obama draws to a close, I keep thinking about a piece I wrote for The Root eight years ago when he was sworn in for the first time. Back then, I couldn’t stop singing anthems of joy and patriotism, grounded in what now seems like a…
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26-Year-Old Becomes Stockton, Calif.’s 1st Black Mayor
Even though Tuesday night didn’t give us the history-making moment we were all expecting, for Stockton Calif., City Councilman Michael Tubbs, election night was doubly historic. Not only did he become the city’s first black mayor, but he also becomes the youngest mayor in the city’s history, according to the Stockton Record. “I’m tired of…
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7 Black Movies to See if You Can’t Bear to See Birth of a Nation (or Even if You Do)
Ever since Nate Parker’s film The Birth of a Nation earned a record $17.5 million distribution deal and walked away with the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival back in January, the movie has been positioned as the film most likely to solve Hollywood’s #OscarsSoWhite problem. But Parker’s past…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
