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When Black Twitter Celebrated the First Juneteenth
Have you ever wondered what social media would have looked like on the first Juneteenth? Me either. But since we do this Social Studies thing every day, we’ve selected a few social media posts to imagine what this column would have looked like if Black Twitter existed on June 19, 1865, as the news broke…
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The Stolen Life of Mecenia Dials
Macie’s dead. She was not killed by a police officer while running away. She was not killed by black-on-black crime. She did not die in a school shooting. She was not powerless—she was strong — but not strong enough to stop America from opening its ferocious mouth and sucking her into its unyielding belly, swallowing…
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Yes, the Police Are Racist
Why does everyone think the Nazis were racist? Sure, Hitler was definitely racist. He ordered the extermination of the Jews from Germany and later from all over Europe once he became chancellor of Germany. Sure, He built the Third Reich—a political, social and economic regime based on the idea of Aryan supremacy. Sure Nazi soldiers…
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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…
