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San Diego Sergeant Sues Police Department, Says Training Video Depicts a Black Cop as a Monkey
Arthur Scott, a San Diego police sergeant, is suing his Police Department because he believes that a cartoon shown during a training event was “racist” and depicted an African-American officer as a “monkey,” KGTV reports. Scott says that when he tried to communicate his concerns about the video, he “was transferred to a different division,”…
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FSU Football Under Fire for Admitting Defendant Named in the Kendrick Johnson Wrongful Death Suit
Georgia high school linebacker Brian Bell recently committed to Florida State University, but since he is one of the defendants named in a wrongful death suit filed by Kendrick Johnson’s family, some people find that news very upsetting, WTXL reports. Kendrick Johnson was the Georgia high school student who was found dead, rolled up in a…
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Maintain Marital Bliss by Compromising on Conflicting Family Obligations
My husband’s younger brother is turning 30, lives in another state and is planning a night-out party. My family reunion is the same weekend and I’d like us to go. He says he is going to hang with his brother and not go to the reunion. Can you weigh in here? Am I wrong for…
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I’m White, but Tests Show I Have East African DNA. How?
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on Aug. 1, 2014. I am very much a “white” person, with no family oral history to suggest otherwise (except the obligatory Native American-ancestor stories, which don’t pan out). However, when I had a test done for myself by Ancestry DNA, my results came back with around 1…
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Read Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s Acceptance Speech for the duPont Award
Editor’s note: The Root’s editor-in-chief, Henry Louis Gates Jr., was one of 14 recipients Tuesday night of an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for his six-part PBS documentary, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. Here’s his acceptance speech for the award: Thank you so very much, Cynthia McFadden, for that very kind introduction. I sat…
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Drive-By Shooting Suspect Arrested in Killing of Tenn. Girl as She Slept in Her Home
A 13-year-old Tennessee girl was shot in the head during a drive-by shooting and later died earlier this month, and on Tuesday, police officers arrested the man they believe is responsible: 19-year-old Joseph Hendry, WKRN reports. C’Asia Watkins was sound asleep in her Lebanon, Tenn., home on Jan. 5 when it “was riddled with bullets,”…
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Ernest J. Gaines: A Great American Author Pays It Forward to a New Generation of Black Writers
Ernest J. Gaines was born in 1933 to a family of sharecroppers at River Lake Plantation in Oscar, La. They lived in the workers quarters on a dirt road lined on both sides with two-room cabins built by their slave ancestors. There was no running water or inside toilet, no electricity. Five months of the…
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The Economy? 30 Mentions. Race Relations? Eh—About 5. Here’s Obama’s SOTU Speech by the Numbers
While the rest of you were playing State of the Union drinking games (taking a shot every time Speaker of the House John Boehner grimaced, eh?), we over here at The Root were hunkered down, scouring over every word the president spoke to get an understanding of what issues he wanted to zero in on.…
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Supreme Court, Don’t Gut the Fair Housing Act
Before former Sen. Edward Brooke (R-Mass.) died earlier this month, one of his final acts of advocacy was an effort to save the Fair Housing Act—and the Supreme Court should pay close attention to Sen. Brooke’s defense of this landmark legislation as it considers the future of this law. Sen. Brooke was the first African…
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Middleweight Boxer Jermain Taylor Arrested on Charge of Pulling Gun on Family at MLK Parade
Middleweight boxer Jermain Taylor was arrested at a Martin Luther King Jr. parade in Little Rock, Ark., Monday after he allegedly put a gun to a man’s head and threatened to shoot, the Associated Press reports. During the parade, Taylor reportedly wielded his championship belt for everyone to see and then knelt down to give it…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
