-
Gayle King Interviews America
In a story reported by The Root staff writer Ishena Robinson, Gayle King interviewed the exhausting Miya Ponsetto, a woman who is also— Ishena can explain it better than I can: Interview maven Gayle King found out exactly how exhausting when she spoke to Ponsetto for CBS This Morning, hours before the 22-year-old was nabbed…
-
The Root's Clapback Mailbag: Nobody Knows the Trouble Whites See, Nobody Knows Their Sorrow
The Clapback Mailbag is a negro spiritual. White people love negro spirituals. They love the pain in the songs and the hope in the lyrics. If you ever want to steal shit from white people, just start singing a nineteenth-century slave song and I guarantee you they will close their eyes, lean back and enter…
-
Y'all Tired Yet?
My mother thinks I love her. During one of our long rambling conversations about who died in our hometown and her trying to make me remember Miss Cora (who, I am apparently supposed to recall when she bought me a lollipop in the Piggly Wiggly when I was 3 years old…you know, she drove that…
-
For Black People, Wednesday Was Just Another Day in America
There must be a certain stomach-churning consternation that comes with watching a house made of privilege disintegrate like a sandcastle at high tide. To watch the waves that keep you afloat wash over the moat that protects you. To discover that the gleaming beacon of liberty and freedom was never anything but a tiki torch.…
-
To Georgia, and Black People, Who Are One and the Same
Real quick: I heard them on the phone talking about you, disparaging your integrity. I would have at least told them to keep my people’s name out of their mouths, but I imagine that’s how white boys talk in private. In my head, they’re always talking about titties, yelling the n-word or concocting a nefarious…
-
Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin Hospitalized With COVID-19
Five days after announcing that he tested positive for the coronavirus, Birmingham, Ala., Mayor Randall Woodfin has been hospitalized with COVID-19 complications. The announcement came just days after Woodfin lost his grandmother to the disease. “COVID-19 has made its way to my doorstep,” wrote Woodfin in a Wednesday tweet revealing that he was suffering from…
-
'I Feel Like I'm Finna Die': Why Everyone in Alabama's Prison System Has a Death Sentence [Updated]
For a portion of his 22 years, Bernard Jemison has been incarcerated at Kilby Correctional Facility, a maximum-security penitentiary located just outside of Montgomery, Ala. According to Alabama Department of Corrections documents reviewed by The Root, in September, 1031 men were housed in a prison designed to hold 440 men, an occupancy rate of 234…
-
Booger Says a Beautiful Thing
Every week, just outside of Charleston, S.C., hundreds of (mostly white) people pay for tours of the beautiful antebellum home that housed generations of white enslavers at the Magnolia Gardens Plantation. The home is located on the Ashley River, surrounded by a romantic-style botanical garden that was built and cared for by the enslaved. The…
-
Black Paranoia and the COVID Vaccine, Explained
Hey, Racist Baby! How are you doing? I haven’t seen you in a while. What does that even mean, you little baby bigot? Wait…are you trying to say “As-Salaam-Alaikum?” Stop it, my little tyke nationalist. You’re going too far. Please don’t tell me your racist parents have turned you into an anti-masker. Well. my little…
-
Newly Elected Black Santa Could Leave Millions Giftless
The newly elected Black CEO in charge of the charity startup founded in a small Bethlehem manger before moving to its sprawling North Pole headquarters has issued a slate of groundbreaking policies that could result in a very unmerry Christmas for millions of children around the globe. Although many people stupidly assume one person has…
