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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…
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Noted Philosopher Marshawn Lynch Explains Self-Care in 90 Seconds or Less
Marshawn Lynch is a goddamn national treasure. Don’t debate me on this. Marshawn Lynch knows what the lonely do at Christmas and who let the dogs out. Before the Avengers asked the Wakandans to help defeat Thanos, they went to Marshawn Lynch’s house but he was at the gym. Marshawn Lynch gave Popeyes his secret…
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How to Be a Better White Person in 2020
Occasionally The Root will interrupt our coverage of black news, opinions, politics, and culture to openly address our white readership. In 2020, we’d like to finally have that oft-discussed “conversation about race” we hear you guys mention so often. To be clear, white people need to have a conversation about race. Black people in America…
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White Woman Acquitted of Hate Crime After Using Racial Slurs, Slapping Black Car Salesman
A pickup truck-driving white woman who “backhanded” a car salesman was cleared of ethnic intimidation charges on Monday after a judge ruled that slapping the shit out of a black man and calling him “nigger” isn’t necessarily racist if she’s upset about her trade-in value. Kent County Circuit Judge Paul Sullivan acquitted 47-year-old Shelley Hueckel…
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Christmas Vs. Kwanzaa: The Tale of the Tape
I was raised in a fundamentalist church that believed in the seventh-day Sabbath, tambourines and neverending, four-nights-a-week services that lasted well into Arsenio Hall’s opening monologue. Apparently, God’s eternal kingdom specifically forbade rap music, brazen women who had premarital sex (if you were a man it wasn’t ok but it didn’t decrease your value) and…
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The Root’s Clapback Mailbag: O Come, All Ye Racists
“The Clapback Song”: Nikes roasting on an open firePete Buttigieg lying through his noseJonas Brothers singing Earth Wing & FireWhite people in plantation wedding photos Everybody knows, that phone call to Ukraine was badAnd what they did to Kaepernick ain’t rightBut white people are spitting madBecause a MAGA jaw got broken in a fight. They…
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22 Cops in St. Louis Were Exposed for Racist Facebook Posts. 2 Were Fired
A “proud” Missouri “cracker” and a KKKop whose pseudonym on social media was apparently inspired by a leadership position in the Ku Klux Klan have been terminated after a watchdog group discovered Facebook posts by nearly two dozen St. Louis police officers displaying bigotry, hatred and a predilection for violence. The Metropolitan Police Department of…
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Ayanna Pressley Introduces Legislation to End the ‘Pushout’ of Black Girls
We are all magicians. This country practices a particular kind of wizardry that can make black votes disappear; turn a black radical into a whitewashed moderate and hypnotize an entire population into somehow believing that “illegal immigrants” can trespass on stolen land. But the most wondrous trick of all is how we treat black girls.…
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The Root's Clapback Mailbag: Major League Clapback
Each Friday, we wade through our emails, tweets, comments and DMs to respond to readers who are searching for feedback, validation or someone at whom they can scream the n-word without being slapped like they stole something. But not this week. When the pair of articles about Mayor Pete Buttigieg came out last week, there…
