-
What They Mean When They Say 'Send Her Back'
What is an American? Is it defined by borders, treaties, laws and the Constitution or is it a nebulous set of mutable ideas and fluctuating standards? And who gets to decide? Is it as everchanging as this country’s boundary lines or was it set in stone by the cabal of white men who first conceived…
-
Hate Thy Neighbor: Man Allegedly Sent Hallmark Cards Threatening to Shoot ‘Minorities’ Who Move Into His Neighborhood
Authorities charged a California man with hate crimes upon finding a cache of weapons and ammunition in his home, after he was accused of sending threatening greeting cards to his non-white neighbors. On June 30, police in San Luis Obispo, Calif, arrested the future star of a Dateline NBC episode, 62-year-old Richard Vincent Orcutt, after…
-
CNN Invites White Supremacist Richard Spencer to Explain Why Trump Isn’t Racist Enough
In an obvious nod to Donald Trump’s “both sides” doctrine, America’s third-favorite cable news outlet (second, if you don’t count Trump’s personal propaganda network, Fox News) extended an invitation to the man whom both the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League described as a white nationalist, a white supremacist and—my personal favorite—a “racist…
-
The Unofficial Guide to Whitesplaining Racism
Racism: Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior —The Oxford/English Dictionary text Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) was born in Detroit. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was born in the Bronx. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) immigrated to…
-
If You Helped a Racist Become the Most Powerful Person in America, Then You’re a Racist Too
Legally, Lakeith Smith is a murderer. When he was 15 years old, police officers confronted Lakeith and a group of friends after the teenagers allegedly burglarized a home in Millbrook, Ala. One of the boys, 16-year-old A’Donte Washington, “brandished” a gun, according to police, forcing officers to shoot Washington four times, killing him. Alabama’s law…
-
A Police Chief Was ‘Concerned’ About How His Department Handled Police Shootings, So He Kept It a Secret
A Kansas police chief said that he was so concerned that his department was “contaminating” police shooting probes that he took several steps to address the issue, including continuing to employ allegedly corrupt officers, keeping broken policies in place and—most importantly—keeping all of this a secret. According to the Associated Press, newly filed documents in…
-
Murder Victim’s Sons Attack Their Mother’s Killer in Court
In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by three separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime; the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders and the victims’ family, who often wish they could offer a can of whoop-ass to the defendant. This is their story. Two Ohio men furnished the plot…
-
A Cop Killed EJ Bradford in an Alabama Mall and Someone Will Finally Face Jail Time—the Protesters
Seven months after protests shut down the Alabama mall where a police officer shot and killed EJ Bradford, prosecutors are seeking justice against the troublemakers who disturbed the way of life in the idyllic southern suburb… The people who were protesting. On Nov. 22, 2018, a police officer in the Birmingham, Ala., suburb of Hoover…
-
The Root's Clapback Mailbag: Y'all Won
Of all the things I have ever written for The Root, there are a handful of articles that inspired the most material for the weekly Clapback Mailbag. If I had to rank them from lowest to high in terms of hate mail received, the order would go as follows: 5. “An Open Letter to White…
-
What’s Up With Jeffrey Epstein and Why Should You Care?
On Monday, U.S. attorneys for the Southern District of New York unsealed a 14-page indictment that accused wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein of soliciting girls, some as young as 14, for sex acts in his sprawling Palm Beach, Fla., mansion and his 21,000 square-foot residence that is one of the largest in Manhattan. In a press…
