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White Dad Wonders How to Raise His Biracial Kids
“My wife and I have been married one month (to the day) and been together for about four years before that, so naturally the subject of kids has come up. She is mostly black, and one-quarter Cherokee, while I’m as white as Wonderbread, with mostly Scottish and German ancestry. We’re excited to introduce our future…
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Obama’s Loner Habits Cost Him Clout
The first black president of the United States is one of the loneliest people on the planet. And President Barack Obama’s iron-willed self-discipline and interpersonally cool traits—traits that many credited with his improbable rise to the White House—have recently been interpreted in two journalistic accounts as liabilities that depict him as a distant commander in…
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Michelle Obama on Education: ‘My Story Can Be Your Story’
In a brand-new policy role, first lady Michelle Obama is getting behind President Obama’s goal to ensure that the United States produces the highest percentage of college graduates in the world by 2020. And when it comes one part of that initiative—motivating kids in underserved communities to do whatever it takes to graduate high school and…
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Chris Brown’s Latest Homophobic Rant
For The Grapevine’s weekly obligatory Chris Brown report: The troubled singer went after Perez Hilton and Wendy Williams on Twitter, calling them both “buff chicks” for talking about the recent relevation that he “lost his virginity” when he was 8 years old. Hilton appeared as a guest on The Wendy Williams Show last Friday, where…
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More Dumb Stuff Richard Cohen Says
It’s hard being a 72-year-old white guy in America. You grew up in a different time. You’re used to being accepted as the “norm” of your society. For decades you’ve had all the privilege that “whiteness” has provided in America—yet the country you know is changing. Ideas that were completely reasonable and normal are now…
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Quote of the Day: May Miller on Her Success
Read how the quote is referenced 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 is also the editor-in-chief of The Root. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
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Quote of the Day: May Miller on Her Success
I am where I am because of the bridges I have crossed. Sojourner Truth was a bridge. Harriet Tubman was a bridge. Ida B. Wells was a bridge. Madam C.J. Walker was a bridge. Fannie Lou Hamer was a bridge. —May Miller Read how the quote is referenced here. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse…
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Outgunned: No More Body Bags
Oct. 24, 2013: A 33-year-old man is shot in the back of the head while playing basketball in Gresham, Ore. Oct. 27, 2013: A 17-year-old boy and 39-year old man are shot and killed in gang-related violence in Chicago. Nov. 5, 2013: Two men are shot to death in Baltimore. A witness told reporters there…
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'12 Years a Slave': In Our 'Postracial' Age, the Legacy of Slavery Lives On
The following essay has been reprinted with permission from the Guardian. Slavery has been written off as part of the pre-history of our world. Contemporary capitalism was shaped by its rational brutality but the banks, insurers and speculators who facilitated and expanded slavery have been able to project their activity as unsullied by a cruel…
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A Black Warrior’s Defeat Is Still a Symbolic Victory
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. Tucked away within the winding streets of the southern-French town of…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
