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How I Used to Want Blond Hair
Ramou Sarr went through a long process of ridding herself of thoughts that she was ugly and inferior as an African-American girl, especially growing up in predominantly white environments. At Black Girls Talking, Sarr describes how she once yearned for blond hair. The ways in which my self-hatred manifested itself slowly changed, however. It became…
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Obama Should Fight for Jobs as He Fights for Syria
If the Obama administration applied the same energy toward policies to reduce poverty and create jobs that it has toward making a case for military intervention in Syria, we might see an uptick in the economy, Jamal Simmons argues at U.S. News & World Report. Americans are still in distress and the president should marshal…
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Gucci Mane's Bizarre Twitter Rant
(The Root) — It’s being reported that Gucci Mane has been dropped from Atlantic Records after a Twitter rant attacking several other rappers. He fired off a series of barely readable tweets that ticked off quite a few people in the rap world and provided a solid hour of entertainment for the rest of us.…
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New NAACP President Should Be a Woman
The NAACP needs a new president in January, and in Salon, Brittney Cooper says the civil rights group’s next leader should be a woman. The vacancy gives the organization a chance to send a message about the significance of women to its mission. Though African-American culture is still enamored with charismatic race men, the NAACP…
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Zimmerman's Lawyer: Don't Ask Me About Domestic Incident
On Tuesday Mark O’Mara, the lead defense attorney in the George Zimmerman second-degree-murder trial, told CNN that he would not be representing Zimmerman in any legal proceedings involving estranged wife Shellie Zimmerman, who filed for divorce last week. “I am not representing George Zimmerman in his recent domestic altercation case or his impending divorce case,”…
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Quote of the Day: H. Rap Brown on Racism
Read more about H. Rap Brown 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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Using Humor in the Dialogue on Race
(The Root) — “W. Kamau Bell is one of America’s few leftist black male feminists from San Francisco with his own television talk show, and for that alone he should be treasured,” Salon wrote last year. He’s also a straight, married young dad who’s an outspoken proponent of marriage equality and gay rights. Welcome to…
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Natural Hair and Black-on-Black Shame
(The Root) — You know how sometimes you just know something, even when you have no proof? Call it a “feeling” in my gut or the past being a predictor of the future. But whatever it was, when I heard about 7-year-old Tiana Parker, who was being harassed by her school because of her locks,…
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16th Street Baptist Church: Still Standing
(The Root) — The doors of Birmingham, Ala.’s 16th Street Baptist Church are open seven days a week, and almost every day, visitors from across the country and around the world come to see the place where a bomb killed four little girls Sept. 15, 1963, at the height of the struggle for civil rights…
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A Black French Woman Smiles at Freedom
(The Root) — 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 Institute for African and African American Research. A young black woman, her face timeless yet somehow familiar, looks down with a sideways glance, her lips parted…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
