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How a Beautifully Detailed Map Hides the Horror of a Looming Slave Trade
This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black in Western Art Archive at Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute, part of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Though crowded with lively detail and a wealth of place names,…
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Can Democrats Win Black Votes Without Republican Racism?
Ever since President Barack Obama took office, a pretty reliable pattern has emerged: On a regular basis someone will say, write or tweet something racist about the president and the media will cover it—including yours truly. Someone apologizes for the remark (or doesn’t), and someone else distances himself or his organization from the offender in…
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Michelle Obama’s Food Fight: Will She Back Down Again?
The News: The House Appropriations Committee passed a measure to roll back school-nutrition guidelines central to Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign against the epidemic of overweight and obese children. As part of a Republican-authored $21 billion agriculture-spending bill, schools would be allowed to opt out of requirements for food served in the federal free or reduced-lunch…
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Was History’s Richest Person Black?
Editor’s note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series, please take a moment to learn about historian Joel A. Rogers, author of the 1934 book 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof, to whom these “amazing facts” are an homage. Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 82: Who was history’s wealthiest…
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Why Women Can’t Hide From Men
On Memorial Day, we had four encounters with men. We: three women—my mother, my daughter and I—walking near Washington Circle Park, hungry after checking out of the hotel in Washington, D.C., where I’d booked a one-night stay. They: everywhere. The first man did not ask for money; the sign propped against him on the sidewalk…
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Justin Bieber Tells N-Word Joke on Video
TMZ on Sunday posted a video of a 15-year-old Justin Bieber, who is now 20, telling a racist joke to friends. “Why are black people afraid of chain saws?” he asks in the video that first surfaced Sunday on a British pay site, TMZ reports. His punchline: “Run n—ger,” repeatedly saying the n-word while laughing.…
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District Suspends White Teacher Over Blackface Lesson
A Michigan community is rallying behind a teacher who was suspended after showing a video of white entertainers in blackface during an African-American history lesson, according to the Monroe News. The white teacher, Alan Barron, 59, showed his Monroe Middle School eighth-grade class a video of how white people used blackface to imitate African Americans…
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V. Stiviano Mocks Blacks in Reality TV Video
Los Angeles Clippers co-owner Donald Sterling’s world was turned upside down last month when an audio recording surfaced of him making racist remarks to his companion V. Stiviano. The comments prompted the NBA to ban him for life and force him to sell the team. Now it appears that turnabout is fairplay after Stiviano herself…
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6 Cleveland Police Officers Indicted in Shooting Deaths of 2 Unarmed Suspects
A grand jury has indicted six Cleveland police officers in the deaths of two unarmed suspects, who were killed in a spray of 137 bullets after a wild car chase that ended in a schoolyard, the Associated Press reports. The indictment on Friday is part of a far-reaching federal investigation into “the Cleveland Police Department’s…
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The Annoyingly Effective Ways African and Caribbean Parents Get Their Kids to Get A’s
Social media have been inundated with news reports about those brilliant high school students who gained admission to a boatload of Ivy League schools. That many of them are first-generation black Americans (children whose parents come from countries in Africa or the Caribbean) made headlines, too. Not to mention that “Tiger Mom” Amy Chua put…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
