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Genital Cutting Is Traumatizing US Doctors and Their African Patients
The number of female African immigrants living in the U.S. who have had their genitals cut or mutilated is nearing the half-million mark, the New York Times reports. American gynecologists and other health care providers are increasingly being exposed to a custom that many of them are simply not prepared to take on. That 500,000…
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Atlanta Woman Sentenced to 4 Years in Prison for Scalding Woman With Hot Oil
An Atlanta woman was sentenced to four years in prison and 36 years on probation Wednesday for helping to throw hot oil—that had been heated on a stove—on another woman during a fight in February 2014, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Myzelle Chantel Armstrong, 19, and her friends had gotten into it with other women on…
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Former Al-Qaida Operative Says Saudi Royals Sponsored Sept. 11 Terrorists
Zacarias Moussaoui, the French citizen of Moroccan descent and former al-Qaida operative convicted of helping to plan the 9/11 attacks against the U.S., told a federal judge that in the late 1990s, senior royals in Saudi Arabia sponsored al-Qaida—the same group that went on to carry out the Sept. 11 attacks, the New York Times…
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What to Do When Your Fiance’s Baby Mama Wants to Attend Your Wedding
I’m getting married later this year. My fiance’s son is in the wedding and reception, and his mother wants to come to the reception. I said yes to the wedding, but she and I aren’t friends. No hard feelings toward her, I just don’t want her at my reception. My fiance said it’s not a big…
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Black in Amsterdam: Should I Return to the US to Expose My Son to ‘the Struggle,’ or Nah?
Marly Pierre-Louis spotted them out of the corner of her eye. She was sitting on the train in Amsterdam one winter day and did an about-face the second she stepped on the platform so that she wouldn’t have to get a full view of the ridiculousness. “White Dutch people in blackface, curly hair and red lipstick,” Pierre-Louis, a 31-year-old…
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How Did My Free Black Ancestor Live Under the Confederacy?
My third-great-grandfather Jacob Sampson (1786-1870) of Goochland County, Va., owned a 500-acre plantation in Goochland before, during and after the Civil War. I know he was a slave until 1821, and the land is listed on an 1863 Confederate map of the county. It seems odd that there is so little information about a former…
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A Black Whaling Captain Escaped Prejudice at Sea
Editor’s note: For Black History Month, The Root is spotlighting less famous figures from the African American National Biography, whose stories cast a light on hidden or barely remembered episodes from the African-American past. William T. Shorey, a whaling captain known as the Black Ahab, after Moby Dick’s protagonist, was born in Barbados in 1859,…
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Match Made in Heaven: Black Bachelor Explains Why He’s Looking for Love on TV
Maybe you remember this: A couple of years ago, The Bachelor—ABC’s megahit reality show featuring (nonblack) men, with access to an inordinate number of roses, who were looking for love while the cameras rolled on—was accused of being racist. In 19 seasons of the show, there had never been a black bachelor. There was even…
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Oklahoma City Woman Robs Subway Restaurant but Leaves a $1 Tip for the Cashier
An Oklahoma City woman walked up to the counter at a Subway restaurant, pulled out a rifle and demanded that the cashier give her cash. But before the robber left, she turned around and placed a $1 bill in the employee tip jar, telling the cashier, “That’s for you,” ABC 7 News reports. The report…
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Report: Girls of Color Disciplined Much More Harshly in School Than White Girls
Similar to the Villanova University report released in December about how black girls with browner hues were disciplined much more harshly and much more frequently than fairer-skinned black girls, a new report released Wednesday by Columbia University’s Law School found that girls of color “face much harsher school discipline” than their white counterparts, a press release issued…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
