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Is It Hip-Hop Homophobia Over French Nails and Skirts?
Apparently, veteran gangster rapper Snoop Dogg still enjoys defying all the rules of so-called authentic black masculinity found in mainstream hip-hop culture. After reinventing himself as a devoted father and Snoop Lion—the reggae-infused advocate of black consciousness and universal love—he is now using Instagram to promote his fierce, duo-chrome French manicure, complete with marijuana leaf…
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DNA Test Showed Mostly European Ancestry? It’s OK, You’re Still African American
52.9. I’d never given much thought to this arrangement of numbers until a few months ago. Those digits represent a majority of my ancestral makeup. During a recent DNA examination, I discovered that 52.9 percent of my ancestors are European. My African relatives make up 43.4 percent of my DNA (including 28 percent West African). A small…
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Single Parents and Money: The Root Live at 11 A.M.
In many African-American families, when we have an important issue to discuss, we gather in the kitchen and bring it to the table. That’s especially true of financial discussions, whether about how to pay the bills, how to send Junior to college or where to start looking for a new job. For the next six…
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Why All the Anger Over a Model’s Breast-Feeding Photo?
When breasts are propped high in Victoria’s Secret ads or the pages of King magazine, or an A-list star wears a dress cut to her navel or maybe a R-related movie shows women flashing them freely, few people seem to have a problem. Maybe some advocacy groups for teenage girls and their self-esteem, maybe some…
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Why Is a Black Man in a French Family Portrait?
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. Taken for granted today, the pictorial commemoration of the family was…
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Erika Harold Could Be a GOP Star. First, Though, She’ll Have to Win
There’s a young, multiracial Harvard lawyer running for Congress in Illinois. But it’s not 2000, and she’s not Barack Obama. And while former Miss America Erika Harold would almost surely resist the comparison—particularly a week out from primary election day—it’s hard not to notice the biographical similarities between her and the president, even though she’s…
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From Leather Skirts to French Nails, Brothers Are Stylin’
Actor Omar Epps sparked a Twitter storm when he donned a leather skirt for his appearance on The View. But Epps isn’t the only man pushing the envelope when it comes to style. We found a few more famous men who are getting in touch with their feminine side when it comes to fashion and…
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Rejection of Obama’s DOJ Nominee Means Trouble for Black Defendants
Debo Adegbile’s contentious confirmation hearings and failure to be confirmed as assistant attorney general for civil rights led one senior Democratic Senate aide to say that racial bias has cast a permanent pall over the confirmation process for black Obama nominees. But the treatment Adegbile faced, which the aide called a “smear campaign” and President…
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Quote of the Day: Nelson Mandela on Contracts
You can read this quote by Nelson Mandela, from a statement he gave while in prison in 1985, in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read the quote in its full context here. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He…
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Because of Bipolar Disorder, I Wasn’t Sure I’d Make It to 25
I’ve often thought of doing what Sylvia Plath described so poetically: “I thought it would be easy, lying in the tub and seeing the redness flower from my wrists … till I sank to sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies.” Ever the poet, even my suicidal ideations are perfectly crafted for greatest artistic impact.…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
