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‘Unpopular Black Opinion’ Confessions
There are unpopular opinions, and then there are unpopular black opinions. Have you ever been talking to your friends and let one slip? Maybe you’ve come out as anti-Scandal or, worse, turned the station when a Beyoncé song came on. The backlash that can come from speaking your truth is enough to make you worry…
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The Root’s Summer Reading List
Who says summer reading has to be fluff? There are so many recent titles and reprinted standouts tackling the black experience—in poetry, biography and works of fiction—that even the most voracious readers can barely keep up. Pack one of these to turn a trip to the pool into an inspiring escape, and get your sun…
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A More Diverse Medical Profession Means Better Care for a Diverse America
If there was any doubt left that the Obama era didn’t usher in a postracial society, it was erased in the last few weeks by the spectacle that was the Donald Sterling affair. It probably doesn’t surprise anyone at this point that we have not yet reached the promised land of equality and racial blindness…
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Miles Davis Way Unveiled in New York City
On May 26, the day that would have been his 88th birthday, the iconic trumpeter Miles Davis was honored in New York City with the unveiling of a street, Miles Davis Way, on the West 77th Street block where he lived in Manhattan from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s. “The contribution he made to…
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The Black Roots of Memorial Day
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. 81: What was “Freedom’s Fort,”…
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Environmental Justice Requires MLK’s Fierce Urgency of Now
More than 50 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about race in America and invoked the imagery of this nation’s natural beauty to inspire and encourage collective action and to implore our sense of justice to “roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Five years later, in 1968, just hours…
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Can We Please Get Some Black Gay Male Couples on TV?
My television raised me. I’m not criticizing my mom here. A single mother, she worked tirelessly to give her only son whatever he wanted and needed, and that meant she was busy. Often, the TV stood in for both of my parents. I began to look to it for anything I needed to know about…
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Tight Bathing Suit? Check. Welcome to Memorial Day!
Memorial Day is an unofficial marker that the year is almost half over, that the bathing suit you swore you would fit into come summertime still doesn’t fit, and that your New Year’s resolution to work out every day … well, yeah, see above-mentioned bathing suit. But don’t let the gloomy blues of life get…
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Sharpton Hits NYPD Over Teen Reportedly Shoved Through Window
The Rev. Al Sharpton on Saturday defended a 14-year-old Bronx, N.Y., boy who reportedly talked so much trash after his arrest on an assault charge that a New York Police Department sergeant allegedly pushed him, causing him to fall through a storefront window, the Daily News reports. Speaking at a news conference at his National…
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Watch: Ben Carson Slams Administration Over Veterans Scandal
The widening scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs signals that the government is incapable of managing the nation’s vast health care system, retired neurosurgeon-turned-GOP icon Ben Carson told Fox News Saturday. Carson, a Fox News contributor, joins a growing chorus of critics of the Obama administration over recently surfaced problems at veterans hospitals, including…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
