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Social Studies: Black People Invented Social Media
According to numerous internet historians, including Social Media Today, in 1997, a website called Six Degrees was the first social media platform on the world wide web. Then came Friendster, which began in 2002. Then Myspace and LinkedIn burst on the scene in 2003. Facebook emerged in 2004, which begat Twitter in 2006… And the…
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The Root's Clapback Mailbag: Old Whites' Tales
I’m not religious, and I know that thunder and lightning are caused by electrostatic charges superheating the air, producing a rapid atmospheric expansion that causes a sonic boom. I don’t think my hallucinations during REM sleep give me information about fertility, nor do I believe stop signs and telephone poles determine my future. I’ve done…
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Donald Trump Is the Most Effective President Ever
Effective: (adj.) successful or achieving the results that you want. text When they retired from the slave trade, Isaac Franklin and John Armfield had amassed a fortune worth billions in today’s dollars by building a business that was essentially the Amazon of slave-selling. They didn’t grow anything, nor did they participate in the transatlantic slave…
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There's a New Frontrunner for the Greatest Karen of All Time—and of Course, She's From Florida
If such a thing as Hell exists, then there must be an entrance. And if there is an entrance to the mythical Hades, one could imagine that there is a line at the door. And if there is a line at the door, then there must be a VIP entrance that is probably patrolled by…
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Social Studies: If a Karen Falls in the Woods…
Here’s a question that needs answering: What is the male equivalent of a Karen? Is it Chuck or a Todd? How about Bryce? It’s an existential question akin to “What’s the sound of no Beckies crying?” If a Karen falls in the woods, does God speak to the manager for her? Well, I think we’ve…
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Bakari Sellers' Invisible Black America
I know Bakari Sellers. Before I even read his upcoming memoir, I knew his life story like the back of my hand. We’re practically cousins. We were both raised in eerily similar South Carolina towns. Sellers grew up in Denmark, S.C., where my family briefly ran a small diner where people regularly ordered “liver pudd’n”—a…
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The Root's Clapback Mailbag: True or False Equivalency
“If a white person said that…” “What about…” “The Bible says…” Those three introductory phrases are staples in the language used by trolls. But, while some people immediately tune out everything that follows, we at The Root have an obligation to respond to these false equivalencies. We even built a system for it. All during…
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Social Studies: Black Twitter 'Verzuz' White Twitter
Social media is a great educational tool. Because of slavery, Jim Crow, redlining and white flight, there are many black people who have not had the chance to acquire firsthand knowledge of white people. Luckily, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. allows for great insight into the practices and habits of people who buy clothes from QVC.…
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Armed Black Men Show Up In Neighborhood Where Armed White Men Lynched Ahmaud Arbery
A group of black men exercising their Second Amendment rights showed up in the Georgia neighborhood where Ahmaud Arbery was killed to demonstrate for freedom and liberty because… Oh, wait, I’m showing my journalistic bias by reporting this story in the same way that outlets reported on the white protesters who storm state capital buildings…
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Social Studies: Who in the Hell Left the Gate Open?
Before we begin, can anyone explain this Obamagate stuff that the Trump Administration pushing? First of all, why does adding “gate” to the end of a word make it a scandal? The Nixon Administration was undone by a break-in at the Watergate Hotel and since then, white people just lazily started adding “gate” to random…