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Top 5 Ways to Erase Racism (According to White People)
The Root presents a dramatic reenactment of the entire history of America: In 1609, the Pilgrims arrived and this happened: Then, two weeks ago, a police officer knelt on George Floyd’s neck and black people were like: This is American history. In 1640, Virginia’s General Court created what many are calling the nation’s first “forever…
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The Root's Clapback Mailbag: The Evidence of Things Not Seen
Nigga, I ain’t shitI just know how to rhyme a lil’ bitI’m just trying to squeeze fit my fat ass in wherever I can fit. — Cee-Lo Green Ninety-nine percent of the time, I already know what I’m going to say before I even begin to write the Clapback Mailbag. Today is the other one…
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A Letter Not From a Birmingham Jail
“If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and…
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Where'd All These Woke White People Come From?
My grandmother had a “pork pan.” In 1954, my grandfather built the house I lived in for most of my life. And for all of my life, there was a single cast iron skillet that was dedicated to frying bacon, bologna with the red plastic ring, or any part of a pig. Everyone in my…
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‘Damn That Statue’: Birmingham Proves Protests Work by Forcing Mayor to Confront Racism With ‘Gangsta Shit’
Compared to most cities its size, Birmingham, Ala., didn’t really have a police brutality problem. While extrajudicial killings are always a problem, Birmingham sat near the bottom of the spectrum for American cities with 4.7 police killings per 100,000 citizens, according to Mapping Police Violence. And curiously, as the fourth-blackest city in the nation, Birmingham…
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President Elected by White Supremacists and Russian Bots Spreads Disinformation From White Supremacists and Russian Bots
White supremacists are at home baking cookies while antifa is organizing terror cells. The government is blacking out cell phone signals so you can’t riot. George Soros is paying negro crisis actors. Black people are trying to overthrow the government. These are just a few of the false narratives surrounding the protest against police brutality…
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Social Studies: The Conspiracy Theories Are True
If you’re protesting, the feds are watching. While that may sound like a harebrained conspiracy theory, it is also an incontrovertible fact. In cities across America, police departments, federal agencies and even private companies are using state-of-the-art technology to monitor and surveil black protesters. While we have written about this many times before, it is…
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And the Pulitzer Prize for Caucasity Goes to…
This weekend, as I watched COVID-19’s racial disparities blow a 104,600-point lead to extrajudicial police killings, I pondered the effectiveness of nonviolent protest versus “riots.” I imagined strategies that might deter police brutality. I even considered if chaos was a good thing. But, of all the things that crossed my mind, there was never even…
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Black Minneapoleans are 6 Times More Likely Than Whites to be Choked Unconscious by a Cop. In Other Cities, It's Even Worse
According to the Hennepin County, Minn. criminal complaint, On May 25, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. As Floyd desperately pleaded for his life, Chauvin continued to kneel. Floyd drifted into unconsciousness and Chauvin did not remove his knee for 2 minutes and 53 more…
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Social Studies: Redemption Songs
Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war. Until there no longer first class and second class citizens of any nation. Until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes, me say war.…
