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Trayvon Martin Did Not Tease Rachel Jeantel
Perhaps those who ridiculed Rachel Jeantel in the wake of her testimony during George Zimmerman’s second-degree-murder trial should borrow a page from her friend Trayvon Martin. In a touching interview with Roland Martin, Jeantel’s lawyer, Rod Vereen, describes Trayvon as one of the good guys who did not ridicule the teen because of her looks…
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Gay, Black, Married and Still Unequal
(The Root) — America has become a nation in which gay black men and women can serve openly in the U.S. military, marry each other and have their bond recognized by the federal government. But ironically, those same gay black people may not be able to vote. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court made two…
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BET's 'Being Mary Jane': Relatable
(The Root) — I had coffee with Mara Brock Akil years ago. I was in Los Angeles “taking meetings” about the possibility of optioning the rights to my book to a production company. When my agent asked whose work in Hollywood I trusted — not just admired — the most, Mara’s name flew out of…
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Cornel West: Blacks 'Being Pushed to the Back of the Bus'
While speaking on Smiley & West, his radio show with co-host Tavis Smiley, Cornel West praised the Supreme Court’s ruling last week on gay marriage but complained that “we black folk are just being pushed to the back of the bus in terms of our visibility,” the Washington Times reports. “We’re living in an age…
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Zimmerman Trial: Prosecution Scores
(The Root) — If you’re keeping score in the second-degree-murder trial of George Zimmerman, mark Tuesday’s court proceedings as a narrow victory for the prosecution. The exercise has no bearing on Zimmerman’s fate for fatally shooting Florida teen Trayvon Martin, of course. But after a few days of arguments in which defense attorneys neutralized the…
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No Props to Prada for Hiring 1 Black Model After 19 Years
Prada did something it hasn’t done in 19 years: cast a black model in one of its ads. Writing at Clutch magazine, Britni Danielle is not impressed and cautions fashion buyers and cultural critics against congratulating the fashion house for an occurrence that should happen more frequently, given the diversity that exists in the fashion consumer…
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Help, I'm a Racist and I Don't Want to Be
(The Root) — “I’m a racist, and I don’t want to be. I’m a white man in my very early 40s, and for years I’ve been extremely awkward and anxious around African Americans, especially men. At some point in my early teens, I became very self-conscious about the racial divide. And about that time, I…
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Quote of the Day: Nathan Huggins on the Harlem Renaissance
Read more about Nathan Huggins’ coverage of the Harlem Renaissance 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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Being Single Isn't a Social Crime
(The Root) — You can read this essay in its entirety — plus the thoughts of 40 other prominent African Americans from the worlds of the arts, medicine, religion and academia — in the anthology Where Did Our Love Go: Love and Relationships in the African American Community, available online and wherever books are sold.…
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About This Nation of 'Mutts'
Author Stacy Parker Le Melle takes New York Times columnist David Brooks to task in a piece at the Huffington Post for using the term “mutts” in a recent op-ed. She argues that Brooks does not understand how hurtful the term is to multiracial people and encourages him to pay homage to the myriad cultures…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
