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Watching 12 Years a Slave Could Save Your Life
Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave is leading the Golden Globe nominations and is sure to be an Oscar contender. It’s been praised as an antidote to slavery-nostalgia fantasies like Gone With the Wind. Yet some see no redeeming qualities or uplift in the movie—just pain. Others feel that we don’t need to be reminded…
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Investing in African-American Women Could Jump-Start Economy
(Special to The Root)—African-American-owned businesses are the fastest-growing (pdf) segment of the women-owned-business market and are starting up at a rate six times higher (pdf) than the national average for all new firms. As the Center for American Progress’s new report “The State of Women of Color in the United States” shows, this is good…
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Black Archer Eyes an Unseen Enemy
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. Moving rapidly to the left, the dynamic figure of a black…
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Quote of the Day: Johnnetta B. Cole on Soul
You can find this quote from the essay “Culture: Negro, Black and Nigger,” in The Black Scholar (1970), and additional quotes by Johnnetta B. Cole, in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read more about, and watch video of, Cole here. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins…
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6 Things We Care About More Than Beyoncé’s Feminism
If you’re reading this, you have an Internet connection. And because you have said connection, then you are undoubtedly aware that Beyoncé Knowles released an album out of nowhere last week on Friday. For the better part of the last 96 hours, the Internet has been going HAM about Beyoncé, the person and super-secret album…
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Shocking: Tea Party Group Posts Racist Photo to Facebook
Adam Serwer at MSNBC reports that a conservative group is at it again, using social media to post the wrong damn thing, and further widening the gulf between them and the minority voters they desperately need to court if they want a shot at winning future elections. The National Liberty Federation, formerly known as the…
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Quote of the Day: Dick Gregory on the N-Word
Read this quote from The Shadow That Scares Me (1968), and additional quotes by Dick Gregory, in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. 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 is also the editor-in-chief of The Root.…
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6 Reasons the US Needs to Keep the Focus on South Africa
It’s tempting to forget about South Africa, now that Nelson Mandela has found his final resting place. But the South Africa he transformed is still changing in interesting and surprising ways. The nation is already the economic powerhouse of the continent and has recently muscled its way onto the world stage. It will see watershed…
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Was John Brown’s 1st Victim 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. 60:…
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New Mexico Teacher Disciplined for Racist Santa Remarks
A New Mexico high school teacher is under fire for reportedly telling a black teen that he could not dress as Santa because old St. Nick is white, KOB-4 reports. Officials at Cleveland High School in Rio Rancho, about 15 miles north of Albuquerque, N.M., said Friday that the teacher was disciplined for his comments…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
