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Powerful, Immersive Play As Much as I Can Brings Voices of Southern Gay Black Men and HIV/AIDS Awareness to Harlem
Currently, Angels in America, the most Tony Award-nominated play in history, is smack in the middle of its much anticipated revival on Broadway in New York City. Debuting in 1992, Tony Kushner’s iconic and surreal tale tackles external and internal homophobia, Reaganism, McCarthyism and the AIDS epidemic in a much grittier mid-’80s New York City.…
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How Isolation, Stigma and Shame Are Killing Black Women Living With HIV
“Before I was diagnosed with HIV in 1994, I was a huge people person, but afterwards, I didn’t want to be bothered with the world,” Gina Brown, a community organizer for the Southern AIDS Coalition, told The Root. The New Orleans native added that not only was she hiding from herself, but she was also…
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Master of None’s Lena Waithe on Coming Out in the ‘Thanksgiving’ Episode: ‘It Was Really Important to Get This Right’
When Master of None’s Lena Waithe shared her coming-out story with the show’s writers’ room, she never thought it would ever end up as an episode, let alone one of the Netflix series’ most memorable episodes to date. “I was just talking about my own struggles coming out to my mother. I didn’t think anything…
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Woman Who Lost Her Son to Police Brutality Needs Black Men and Boys to Write Letters to Mothers Like Her
“After my son Clinton was killed, I remember digging into my pain asking God to help me understand why this happened,” Collette Flanagan told The Root in an exclusive interview. “He just didn’t deserve to die.” In 2013, Flanagan’s 25-year-old son, Clinton Allen, was shot and killed by a Dallas police officer in an area…
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Marque Richardson on That Explosive 5th Episode of Dear White People: ‘Those Scenes Were Very Dehumanizing’
Unless you’ve been living under a rock or haven’t borrowed your homie’s Netflix username and password, you should be like the rest of us—pretty damn shook over Dear White People. Adapted from Justin Simien’s 2014 movie of the same name, the new 10-episode series explores myriad issues that black students encounter—racism, class, colorism, interracial dating…
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Why SHE Is the Epitome of Black Women’s Radical Self-Care
It’s no secret that black women are caught in the crosshairs of violence—not just when encountering the police but also in our own communities and homes. But how often do we really talk about it? While the Black Lives Matter Network was co-founded by three black women—two of whom identify as queer—police brutality continues to…
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No, Lee Daniels, We Don’t Need Another Movie About the Down Low
Lee Daniels recently announced the premise behind his upcoming remake of the ’80s sentimental classic Terms of Endearment. In the original, Debra Winger’s character dies of cancer, but in this filmmaker’s version, which also will feature Oprah Winfrey, one of the leads will have AIDS—a disease she contracted by having sex with a man who…
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Why Bingo Love Is the Black Queer Graphic Novel You Need on Your Bookshelf
While one hopes that a Best Picture win for Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight will translate into more stories about black queer men, it cannot be denied that representations of lesbians and queer women of color are sadly lagging behind in pretty much every medium, from film to literature. But Tee Franklin, a queer black, disabled emerging writer,…
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Where Are All the Black Bone Marrow Donors?
“You don’t want to see him on a good day, to be honest; it’s still pretty bad,” Charline Bullock said in an exclusive interview with The Root. Her 5-year-old son, Asaya, suffers from immune dysregulation, polyendocrinopathy, enteropathy, X-linked (or IPEX) syndrome, a rare genetic blood disorder that causes multiple autoimmune disorders. “He is a such…
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Ohio Passes Controversial 'Heartbeat Bill' That Would Ban Abortions 6 Weeks After Conception
Ohio legislators have passed a controversial bill that would ban women from having abortions as early as six weeks after conception, NPR reports. The bill is dubbed the “Heartbeat Bill” because six weeks is around the time that a fetus’s heartbeat can be detected by a doctor. The legislation, which doesn’t have exceptions for rape and incest, is…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
