• Jemele Hill, Jerry Jones, the NCAA and the Sports Slave System

    Stop. Before you object to my use of the word “slave,” let us be clear: I do not mean “slave” in the way you are thinking. I am not trying to invoke the pain and trauma of our ancestors in a hyperbolic comparison. When I write “slave,” I am not using it in the narrow…

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  • Morehouse College Announces New President 

    After a tumultuous year that included three different presidents, a lawsuit filed by members of the Student Government Association and a change in the entire leadership of the institution, Morehouse College has named David A. Thomas as its 12th president. Thomas is the H. Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and…

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  • Top 10 Things White Women Should Boycott Besides Twitter

    Before I begin, let me say that the Harvey Weinstein allegations are atrocious. What he did is despicable, and I do not play oppression Olympics with sexual assault or rape because it the same as white supremacy to me: using a position of strength and power to take advantage of people for the vilest of…

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  • The Root’s Clapback Mailbag: The Whitest Email of All Time

    I’m sorry, y’all, but this week we’re featuring only one piece of email. It’s not that we didn’t receive a lot of hate mail this week. (Don’t worry; we won’t ever run out of shitty comments from disgruntled readers of The Root—ever). It’s just that answering more than one piece of email this week would…

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  • 5 Ways Black People Can Force Commonsense Gun Control 

    They wouldn’t do it after the Las Vegas massacre. They wouldn’t do it after Gabby Giffords was shot. They wouldn’t even do it after Sandy Hook. Maybe there is no one who can break the toxic romance that America has with guns … I bet black people could. You know we have to do all…

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  • I Tried It: Bacon Is the SZA of Meats

    I Tried It: Bacon Is the SZA of Meats

    In my quest to become a whole, functioning human being, I have been going through a yearslong process of undoing and unpacking the subconscious biases and fears that created the person who could never be described any funnier or more succinctly than by my line brother, who once said: “Michael Harriot, you’re one weird-ass strain…

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  • Apple’s Black Diversity Chief Whitesplains How 12 Blue-Eyed Blond Men Can Be Diverse

    Even more pressing than “Can a black person be racist?” is the question “Can a woman mansplain?” or “Can a black woman whitesplain something?” Well, we finally have an answer. Apple is known for three things: Phones that compel the lowlifes who use Android phones to say, “Droids had that feature for years.” Computers that…

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  • The 6 Degrees of Wokeness

    I hate the word “woke.” It is defined as a heightened state of social, political and cultural awareness. Being woke is like taking the red pill from The Matrix, drinking a Red Bull and reading a Ta-Nehisi Coates essay while listening to a Talib Kweli song with Solange on the hook. The only word in…

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  • 10 Things That Might Make America Admit the President Is Losing His Marbles

    Just as there is a difference between mental illness and batshit insanity, there is also a difference between regular madness and white-boy crazy. There are millions of people who suffer from depression, bipolar disorder or dementia. America’s unwillingness to address mental-health issues is an ongoing problem, but that is not what we are here to…

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  • White Woman Who Assaulted Black Man for Kneeling During Anthem Used N-Word, Attends California Baptist University: Report

    The white woman who tossed a beverage on a black man for kneeling during the national anthem is a student at a Baptist university (as is her friend who filmed the encounter), and she has publicly used the n-word multiple times on social media, according to multiple reports. Last week, Savannah Sugg tweeted this video…

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