-
An Open Letter to Daniel Kaluuya, Who Said He’s Bored With Talking About Race
Dear Daniel, Me too.
-
White Student Allegedly Attacks Black Student, Gets ‘That Smoke’; Black Student Gets Arrested, Banned From Campus, Labeled as Too ‘Aggressive’
A black college student was kicked out of a prestigious university after a white fellow student allegedly attacked the black undergraduate and became an unwilling participant in the groundbreaking study: Don’t Start None, Won’t Be None: Consequences Related to the Involuntary Reception of “Deez Hands.” But, while the school severely disciplined the black student, the…
-
Why Your Presidential Candidate Is Trash (Yes, Yours Too)
I fondly remember the days when I was “in the tank” for Bernie Sanders. My time as a shill for Bernie only lasted for a few weeks after I “attacked” Pete Buttigieg with “wokeness,” which was followed by the time I “smeared” Joe Biden, which was months after I unfairly distorted Kamala Harris’ record. But,…
-
How Did So Many People Get the Kobe Story So Wrong?
If you were a Kobe fan as much as I was, then you know that both he and Michael Jordan often repeated the now-famous Phil Jackson quote that characterized their superstar careers: “Let the game come to you.” As a perennial basketball benchwarmer, I never knew what that phrase meant until a barrage of alternative…
-
The Root’s Clapback Mailbag: A Racist In the Sun
In 1951, the great American poet Langston Hughes, in his poem, “Harlem,” asked: What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry uplike a raisin in the sun?Or fester like a sore—And then run?Does it stink like rotten meat?Or crust and sugar over—like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sagslike a heavy load. Or does…
-
Here’s How Many People Police Killed in 2019…We Think
On Oct. 14, 2019, 12-year-old Akeelah Jackson was returning to her St. Louis home from a Family Dollar store. As she crossed the street, an unidentified St. Louis County police officer was pursuing a traffic violation at 59 mph on a street zoned for 30 mph, according to the St. Louis American. When the car…
-
MLK, the KKK and the NRA: A Brief History of Racists With Guns
A white supremacist with a gun killed Martin Luther King Jr. That fact alone makes Monday’s white supremacist-palooza seem particularly disrespectful. However, the history of the Second Amendment reflects America’s obsession with firearms as a means of oppression. Guns have been the primary tool for racial oppression since America was founded, so MLK Day might…
-
The Root’s Clapback Mailbag: The Fresh Prince of Mailbags
Now this is a story all about howEvery Friday, I turn white smiles upside downI’d like to take a second…Maybe a minute or twoto tell you how I became a racist at a site called The Root. In Black America, I was born and raisedPoetry and economics is where I spent most of my daysBut…
-
Black History, According to White People
Mithridates the Great was one of the Roman Empire’s greatest foes and claimed to be a descendant of Alexander the Great, who died by poisoning. Mithridates’ father died from poison. His father died from poison. His mother tried to poison him. Needless to say, Mithridates the Great was obsessed with poison. So, the king created…
-
Michael Bloomberg Claims He Pushed Racist ‘Stop-and-Frisk’ Policy Because He Wanted to Help Black People
One of the most appalling statistics I’ve ever read about racial profiling comes from a 2012 New York Civil Liberties Union report on the NYPD’s racist “stop-and-frisk” policy. In 2011, the NYPD searched 168,126 young black men (between the ages of 14 and 24). Depending on your knowledge of the relationship between crime, race, and…
