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A White Woman Surfs Black Twitter
Wendy Jane Grossman delivers a humorous piece at her blog, Wendy Jane’s Soul Shake, about a white woman who explores black Twitter. “I started feeling like a lurker, who was just trying to be cool by being a part of something I can’t really be on the inside of because … I’m not black. But,…
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Legacy of Slavery Still Monumental
(The Root) — Last month, representatives from member states of CARICOM (the Caribbean Community and Common Market) and half a dozen other nations gathered in tiny St. Vincent and the Grenadines to discuss an idea regarded by some in the United States as radical, fringe, even nuts: reparations for “native genocide and slavery.” Such a…
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Is President Obama Right About the Redskins' Name?
Roxanne Jones, a founding editor of ESPN, writes at CNN that she is pleased that President Barack Obama has weighed in on the controversy surrounding the name of the Washington Redskins. His recent suggestion that the owner consider changing the team’s name could help end a long and divisive debate that has raised concerns about…
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She's Fighting Female Circumcision
(The Root) — To hear 22-year-old Nice Nailantei Leng’ete answer questions from across a table, you have to lean in. She’s that quiet. When she’s chronicling her globally praised work to end female genital mutilation among Kenya’s Masai people, she chooses her words deliberately. (Just one example: She prefers the lesser-used phrase “female genital cutting”…
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Violence Against Black Women: When Will It End?
In the aftermath of the shooting death of unarmed Miriam Carey by police, The Nation‘s Mychal Denzel Smith writes about how America routinely condones unchecked violence against black women. The US House of Representatives applauded the death of Miriam Carey before they knew who she was. They didn’t know about her postpartum depression, or that she talked…
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Is It Safe for a Black Male to Dial 911?
(The Root) — Editor’s note: We were reminded again yesterday that in America, color may still matter as much as character when you’re black and male and you have an encounter with police. And we ask this question: When is coincidence more than coincidence? As The Root reported on Tuesday, Jack Lamar Roberson of Waycross,…
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Hey There. I'm Your New Grapevine Editor
(The Root) — Hi, ya’ll! I’m Akoto, and I’m your new Grapevine editor. The illustrious @BrokeyMcPoverty has moved on from her post here as your uproarious Twitter rabble-rouser and faithful steward of all things black on social media, which means that I’ve been left with quite a tradition to maintain. And if you can’t tell,…
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Trayvon Martin Day Riles Parents
Trayvon Martin Day at a Pittsburgh high school was meant to bring students together and raise social awareness while commemorating the life of the unarmed African-American teen who was shot and killed last year by George Zimmerman, the Daily News reports. Instead it resulted in a loud public outcry from parents, who called it divisive.…
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Quote of the Day: Maria W. Stewart on Africa
Read the quote in its full context here. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute 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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We Need More Black Female Comic Book Characters!
Chaka Cumberbatch, in a piece at xoJane, takes issue with the lack of black female representation in the superhero genre: “Quick — off the top of your head, no Googling allowed — how many black female characters in comics, sci-fi or video games are you able to think of?” Cumberbatch is encouraging the powers that…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
