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Attorney General Issues Veiled Threat to Communities That Protest Police Brutality. You Know Which 'Communities' He's Talking About
A roomful of potential rogue cops and prosecutors breathed a sigh of relief Tuesday after the chief law enforcement officer in America issued a thinly veiled threat to black communities, hinting that law enforcement officers might stop protecting people who don’t want to get shot in the face. Speaking at a ceremony for the Attorney…
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Fear of a White Moderate
Remember that time when white supremacists overthrew the government? No, not when they subverted the U.S. Constitution by deciding enslaved Africans were three-fifths of a white man. I’m talking about the other time. No, not when they added the Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights because southern slaveholders were fearful of armed slave revolts;…
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The Root’s Clapback Mailbag: A Long List of Liars
I don’t know if you heard about it, but I wrote something pretty controversial this week. I’ve always wondered how some people could live in a country so rife with inequality and racism and somehow conclude that race and whiteness had absolutely nothing to do with it, which was exactly why I wrote what I…
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Mother Sues City and Officer Who Killed Emantic Bradford Jr.
The mother of a 21-year-old killed by a police officer has filed a federal lawsuit against the officer and the city that employs the cop who shot and killed her son at an Alabama mall in 2018. During a confrontation on November 22, 2018, someone opened fire inside the Galleria Mall in Hoover, Ala., during…
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Family Members, Ranked
As Black Thanksgiving quickly approaches, it may be necessary for some people who are unfamiliar with this holiday to understand black genealogy. In black culture, the family dynamic is not dictated by genetics, DNA or blood. Instead, much like race, “family” is a social construct. To help our readers understand this subject, we assembled a…
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Pete Buttigieg Called Me. Here's What Happened
The first thing you should know about me is that I absolutely hate talking on the phone. My friends, family and co-workers all know this about me. It’s not the talking that bothers me, it’s the anticipation angst from waiting for a phone call. Therapy and self-reflection have informed me that my subconscious anxiety is…
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Bill Cosby Shares More Pound Cake From Prison
In a wide-ranging interview that spanned multiple phone calls, prisoner number NN7687 spoke out on his refusal to admit guilt, his time behind bars, black families, his accusers, Michael Eric Dyson, the infamous “Pound Cake Speech” and how he might have stopped a prison murder. Over three 15-minute phone conversations, 82-year-old incarcerated comedian Bill Cosby…
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Pete Buttigieg Is a Lying MF
Seven thousand three hundred twenty-two dollars. I hid it in a white Piggly Wiggly bag in the back of the dishwasher. Every single time I returned to that tiny apartment, I opened up that Navajo-white Kenmore dishwasher and made sure it was there. It was not a gift. It was not a reward. It wasn’t…
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Jury Convicts White Cop for Killing Unarmed Black Man
Although the heinous 2016 police shooting only garnered marginal national attention, eight judges refused to try the case. The trial venue was changed from a majority-black city to a rural, mostly white county…in Alabama. The defendant was a white cop who shot and killed a black man…in Alabama. Still, in less than two hours of…
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The 2019 Rules and Revisions for Black Thanksgiving
For black families, Thanksgiving is an entirely different holiday than the traditional feast enjoyed by the dominant culture. When the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving in 1621, most black families in America weren’t invited to the festivities. In fact, legend has it that a particularly unruly enslaved African whispered to a Native Americans as they…
