• Girl Abandoned on a Doorstep Off to College 18 Years Later  

    Sara Gibbs was a single woman, working long hours as a nurse, when she made a decision that would change her life. Gibbs never thought she would be a mother, but after an infant girl was left on the doorstep of a nearby doctor’s office, she made the decision to take the child in. She’s…

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  • If AFSCME Breaks With Black Colleges Over Koch Money, It’s Not Being Principled, It’s Grandstanding

    Let’s say, hypothetically, that a charity that serves veterans, based in my home state of Texas—where 23 percent of folks polled believe that President Barack Obama is Muslim—accepts a sizable donation from the Obama family. But after the Obamas’ donation becomes public, the charity winds up losing significant financial support from some of its conservative…

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  • Study: Black Men Have Made Very Little Progress in 50 Years

    The cradle-to-prison pipeline and the sharp decline in employment opportunities during the Great Recession remain very real for black men. University of Chicago economic researchers Derek Neal and Armin Rick looked at census data to measure the status of black men and presented preliminary findings from their working paper at the National Bureau of Economic…

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  • Florida Barbershop Promotes Literacy by Giving Books to Its Young Customers

    Your local barbershop probably consists of televisions broadcasting ESPN, animated banter on almost any subject and music to match the vibe of the shop. The only literature you would expect to find is a magazine. A Palm Beach County, Fla., barbershop is altering this traditional view of barbershops by taking away the TVs and radios…

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  • Morticians Ditch Bodies After Getting Ousted From Texas Funeral Home

    A foul stench coming from a Fort Worth, Texas, funeral home drew the attention of the building’s landlord during a property check Tuesday morning. Little did the landlord know that the smell was wafting from several unidentified bodies—some already embalmed and in caskets—inside, the Dallas News reports.   Police who responded to the landlord’s call…

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  • Let’s Apply Affirmative Action Based on Present-Day Segregation, Not Race

    In his recent case for reparations, The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates offers this startling fact: “Black families making $100,000 typically live in the kinds of neighborhoods inhabited by white families making $30,000.” It underpins one of his main arguments: that black folks uniquely were victims of intentional, government-sponsored racial segregation that endures and must be compensated…

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  • NJ TV Reporter: Black Men Are Anti-Cop Because They Grow Up Without Dads

    We’ve heard this argument before: Black men’s anti-police mentality can be attributed to an absence of black fathers in the home. Sean Bergin, a white TV reporter with News 12 New Jersey, found himself in hot water for espousing that view during a report that was broadcast on Sunday, the Associated Press reports. Bergin’s report…

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  • Did Pam Oliver’s Haters Help Push Her Aside?

    Veteran journalist Pam Oliver has been a staple on the sidelines of the NFL for a very long time—20 years, in fact. But her role there, at least in the top position, has abruptly come to end. On Monday it was announced that Oliver, 53, had been essentially demoted, from the No. 1 team to…

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  • Wu-Tang-Affiliated Rapper Mutilates His Genitals in Response to ‘Demons’

    Shock value in rap has escalated from N.W.A chanting “F—k the police” in the hook of a song to an artist mutilating himself and then jumping off a building. Forty-year-old Andre Johnson did the latter in April in Los Angeles. Before jumping from the second floor of a North Hollywood building after law enforcement ordered him…

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  • Is Hotel Shampoo Kind of Racist?

    Editor’s note: We took Race Manners to Facebook today, where The Root Associate Editor Jenée Desmond-Harris engaged in a live Q&A. One reader took serious issue with the toiletries offered by major hotel chains, going so far as to call the selections a “microaggression” against black people. Another exchange tacked a timeless question: What does…

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