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The Root's Clapback Mailbag: Maybe Whiteness Is Not a Pandemic
Last week, a white man did white man things, which caused a lot of pain and heartache. Some people call Robert Aaron Long a “spree shooter,” while others call him a “mass murderer.” Because he went from location to location to kill people, he may technically be a serial killer or a hate criminal —…
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A Thing I Wrote About Guns and Loopholes
I should begin with the hole in my sister’s face. I should describe how surprisingly clean a hole a bullet bores into a skull—as if her head was a watermelon or a piece of wood or a thing we did not love. I should probably detail how surprisingly sturdy my knees felt as I stood…
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The Filibuster Is White Supremacy
I do not love America. To be fair, I don’t quite know what “America” is. Is it defined by the piece of paper that once counted me as three-fifths human or a series of borders on a map? Is America defined by the laws that govern it, or is it the people governed by the…
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George Floyd's Family Reaches Record $27 Million Settlement Agreement With Minneapolis
The family of George Floyd settled a civil lawsuit on Friday after the Minneapolis City Council approved what the family’s attorneys are calling the “largest pre-trial civil rights wrongful death settlement in U.S history.” On Friday, during a closed session, the City Council unanimously approved a measure to pay Floyd’s family $27 million for the…
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The Root's Clapback Mailbag: Best Mailbag Ever
The Clapback Mailbag is over. We’ll continue to respond to emails, DMs, tweets and comments every Friday but, to be honest, there’ll never be another mailbag as good as this week’s collection of well-moisturized whiteness. This one is filled with 40 percent more whiteness. This one is the fulfillment of all our clapback dreams. This…
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White People Don't Make No Sense
This headline is grammatically correct. In African American Vernacular English, “no” is a determiner equivalent to the thermodynamic concept of absolute zero. It is the amount of “mess” that James Brown’s papa was willing to take. It describes how much of a joke Rakim considered himself to be. In 1994, researcher Rock Master Scott, in…
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The Journal for America's Largest Medical Association Tweeted: 'No Physician Is Racist.' The Lie Detector Determined…
While everyone is applauding the scientists who figured out how to trick our immune systems into murdering coronaviruses, one of the biggest medical breakthroughs in history has gone undetected by many. We finally figured out how to cure racism. Apparently, the Journal of American Medical Association, an independent arm of the American Medical Association, the…
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A Florida School Decided to Confront Complaints of Racism…Until a Diversity Curriculum Caused 'Angst'
It’s called the “Caucasian Corollary.” Most social, economic, political or even theoretical problems can be solved by addressing the situation, figuring it out, and implementing a strategy to solve the dilemma. If you’re sick, you find out what’s ailing you and you take medicine. To find the answer to 128 divided by 17, you ask…
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The Root's Clapback Mailbag: The Blacker the Content, the Whiter the Tears
The Clapback Mailbag was never supposed to be about me. When we first came up with this idea, I assumed every writer at The Root received damp emails, DMs and tweets soaked with the tears of white clowns. In my view, if you can’t make white people mad, are you even trying? (Sometimes, I am…
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Apparently, Violent Extremism Doesn't Exist
A new study on the Jan. 6 insurrection, rally and jumping-in ceremony at the U.S. Capitol Building determined that most of the participants in the Mutiny on the Ballot were regular schmegular white people just like me and you. The investigation, conducted by the George Washington University Program on Extremism, analyzed arrest information, court documents…
