(The Root) — Miley Cyrus made a fool of herself before and during her performance at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday. She showed up on the red carpet in designer (Dolce & Gabbana) spandex, wagging her tongue and humping the air — her version, I believe, of twerking. Once onstage, Cyrus — bafflingly…

(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. The urge to memorialize great moments in history is one of the defining aspects…

In the wake of actor Lee Thompson Young’s apparent recent suicide, Diamond Sharp courageously shares her story of dealing with mental illness on her Tumblr blog, Shepherds Not Sheep. Her piece addresses a sad reality: Even the most successful people, who seem to have it all together, can suffer from mental illness and commit suicide.…

In a piece for Disrupting Dinner Parties, Dominique Hazzard celebrates “twerking” — the dance rooted in black culture — while calling out white artists, like Miley Cyrus onstage at the MTV Video Music Awards, who appropriate it. She says the dominant culture has associated twerking with hypersexualization, which has caused people to demonize it, not…

Colorado Republican state Sen. Vicki Marble, during a task force discussion about poverty, referenced chicken as one of the reasons for health problems — including sickle-cell anemia, apparently — in the black community, the Denver Post reports. Marble also made a comment about how Mexicans ate healthier in their native country before immigrating to the United States,…

Michael Brown, a black South Carolinian, and two dozen of his family members and friends were asked to leave a Wild Wing Cafe in Charleston because a white customer complained that she felt threatened by the group, the Daily Mail reports. Unable to reach the family sports bar and restaurant’s corporate headquaraters to report the incident,…