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Steele on Limbaugh's 'Chavez' Comment: 'Oh, Because He's Hispanic?'
No one expected Rush Limbaugh to have kind words about Tom Perez, the Justice Department official who is President Barack Obama’s nominee for secretary of labor. But when he compared the Latino attorney to the “grand kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan” and the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, it even got a response from…
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Racist Tweets Rock NY Fire Department
(The Root) — Late Monday, news broke that an aspiring New York firefighter would resign from the city’s fire department, where he was working as an EMT, because of racially inflammatory tweets. Making the matter even more newsworthy and shocking is that the author of the offensive tweets is the son of the city’s fire…
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Saying I Look 'Mixed' Isn't a Compliment
Writing for Clutch magazine, Shayla Pierce says she’s beautiful because of her blackness, not in spite of it. … I can tell by the way they say it. “You look mixed.” It’s the same smarmy inflection with which they deliver such classics like, “Let me take you shopping”; as if they’ve successfully implemented the line…
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The Steubenville Rape Case Is Closed, but What About Sexual Assault in College?
Parlour Magazine‘s Nakia D. Hansen explains why she’s so enraged by what appears to be a trend in the U.S. of universities failing to put proper procedures in place to prevent sexual assault in the first place, investigate claims of sexual assault, protect and support victims and hold perpetrators accountable. Ladies, I’m sorry to have…
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A Nubian Bishop and His Patron Saint
(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 Christian history of Nubia is one of the lesser-known aspects of this fabled land. A rare glimpse into…
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Confessions of a Black Education Reformer
Writing for The Root DC, Natalie Hopkinson explores Andre M. Perry’s take on school discipline, which she calls “one of the realest, toughest calls reforming schools have to make.” “We can’t teach every child because Clarence is a terror,” he pleaded to the discipline committee. “He disrupts the environment.” But the CEO of the charter…
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Does Jada Want a White Woman on Essence Cover?
(The Root) — Last week, Jada Pinkett Smith used her Facebook page to take on Americans’ treatment of young celebrities. On Monday, taking pains to make it clear that she’s “thinking outside the box” and that “these possibilities may be realistic or unrealistic,” the actress wonders this: If black women expect white women to include…
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102-Year-Old's Voter's Letter to Scalia on 'Racial Entitlement'
Desiline Victor — the 102-year-old whose determination to vote in the most recent presidential election despite hourslong lines at her Miami polling place earned her an invitation to the State of the Union address — hasn’t retired from the national stage just yet. This week, the Huffington Post reports, she penned a letter to Supreme…
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11 Things About Tom Perez, Obama's Latino Labor Secretary Pick
On Monday President Obama nominated Tom Perez, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, as labor secretary in his first second-term nomination of a Latino Cabinet member. If confirmed, Perez — whom the president calls a consensus builder whose story “reminds us of this country’s promise” — will play a key role in the…
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What's Missed When Athletes Are Black and Sportswriters Are White?
In a piece for Ebony magazine this week, Jessica Danielle makes the case that the absence of significant racial diversity in sportswriting is limiting perspective in a major way. A few of the statistics driving her argument: In 2012, 90.9 percent of sports editors at the major newspapers and online publications that belong to Associated…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
