• Do Whites Have a Mental-Health Edge?

    (The Root) — Lisa Nicole Carson, the former star of Ally McBeal and Jason’s Lyric, seemed poised to address rumors swirling about her alleged battles with mental illness during her mysterious, decade-long absence from Hollywood. When asked directly by Essence Magazine in 2009 about rumors that she battled either bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, she replied,…

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  • The Onion on Chris Beating Rihanna: Offensive or Funny?

    Here’s an excerpt from a story The Onion published with the headline “Heartbroken Chris Brown Always Thought Rihanna Was Woman He’d Beat to Death.” After revealing yesterday that he had recently split up with longtime girlfriend Rihanna, a heartbroken Chris Brown tearfully told reporters that he always thought the 25-year-old singer was going to be…

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  • Naughty by Nature Feuds on Twitter

    (The Root) — While you were yawning and stretching and getting ready to start another workweek, Naughty by Nature was breaking up on Twitter. Kind of. Monday night, group member Treach tweeted that fellow member Vinnie was “officially fired.” He went on to call Vinnie some colorful names, making it clear that things aren’t OK…

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  • Playing Cupid on Facebook

    (The Root) — Don’t you just love how your mom always tries to set you up with that nice, quiet girl from church, or how your best friend really thinks that you just should go out for coffee with that guy from her gym? Ever wish there was a way for the people in your…

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  • Snoop Lion Gets Into the Photo-Sharing Game

    (The Root) — Have you ever said to yourself, “Self, I really wish there was a way that I could make myself look cartoonishly like Snoop Doggy Dogg in pictures so I can share them with my social media networks”? No? Well, if you ever change your mind, you’re in luck! Snoop, now known as…

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  • Black Folks, We Better Get Moving

    (The Root) — Last week I moderated a panel on 3-D printing at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference, where two CEOs offered insights into this technology that has the potential to disrupt gun safety, manufacturing and possibly the geopolitical relationships between countries. On another panel, a 16-year-old winner of the Intel Science Fair Grand Prize…

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  • Can We Raise Colorblind Children?

    Arguing that the rapper Eve has been blinded to reality by the veneer of money and celebrity, MyBrownBaby blogger Denene Millner hip-checks the star, who says that she wants to raise colorblind children. Now I love Eve, the pitbull in a skirt-turned-“it” girl on the Hollywood scene, and her relationship with British entrepreneur and race…

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  • Charles Ramsey: An Internet Hero for All the Wrong Reasons

    Calling it “a little gross” to make a spectacle of a lower-income black man talking about a horrible crime, Atlantic Wire blogger Connor Simpson excoriates the Internet’s instant meme-ification of Cleveland kidnapping hero Charles Ramsey. No one is saying that Charles Ramsey isn’t worthy of the “hero” mantle. He helped save three women who were held captive…

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  • You Can't Make Your Son Date Black Women

    (The Root) — “I just read your ‘ “Mixed Kids Are the Cutest” Isn’t Cute‘ column, and I thought your comments on the things that are said to and about biracial children were very good. But let’s take it a step further. What about the ‘other’ little girl? The ‘pure’ (for want of another word)…

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