Michelle Obama On How That Famous 2008 New Yorker ‘Fist Bump’ Magazine Cover Changed Everything
Atlanta Nightlife Insiders Respond to 21 Savage’s Claim That the City’s Club Scene ‘Grooms’ Children
The Root’s Ultimate Guide to Holiday Dos and Don’ts
How to Show Up For Someone Who Is Grieving This Holiday Season
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Watch: The Root Staff Executes the Battle of the Fruitcakes
The holidays are here, and what would the holidays be without fruitcake? For many, the answer would be “a time to share love with friends and family, just without a fruitcake.” Touché. Still, here at The Root, we acknowledge that to some, fruitcake is a tradition. So The Root staff decided to put this Christmas…
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Win-Win: Former NFL Player Mike T. Brown Innovates With Charity-Based Sports App
Some people play in online fantasy and sports platforms for the love of the game, while others play for cash, but what if you could play and give back? Win-Win is not your typical fantasy sports platform. Created by former NFL linebacker Mike T. Brown (also known as Mike Tauiliili), Win-Win is designed to connect sports fans to charities as opposed to the…
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Richard Prince’s Book Notes, Part 2: More Holiday Offerings
Below, our latest list of nonfiction books by journalists of color or those of special interest to them—part two of two. Part one was published on Monday. Jonathan Abrams, an accomplished writer for the Bleacher Report who has worked for ESPN’s late Grantland site, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, has “Boys…
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Mykelti Williamson on Fences, Acting While Black and the Power of the Mind
When you’ve been handpicked by Denzel Washington to sign on to a multimillion-dollar film that he’s directing, you know you’re doing something right. And for actor and director Mykelti Williamson, who plays Gabriel in Washington’s rendition of Fences, this is indeed the case. It’s safe to say that as a director, Washington was judicious in…
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NY Times Top Editor Agrees That Diversity ‘Is a Real Issue’
“On Sunday, the New York Times public editor Liz Spayd wrote a column that cut deep to the bone about the lack of racial and ethnic diversity and the ‘newsroom’s blinding whiteness,‘ ” Tanzina Vega wrote Monday for CNN Money. Nicholas Casey, a New York Times correspondent in Venezuela, appears in a Times house ad.…
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Richard Prince’s Book Notes, Part 1: Holiday Offerings
Our latest list of nonfiction books by journalists of color or those of special interest to them—part one of two—includes: a forthcoming memoir by the late Coretta Scott King that is 17 years in the making; the frustrating history of African Americans in the newspaper comics; the story of an escapee from war-torn Biafra; an…
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Watch: Husband-and-Wife Team Create Africa's 1st Brand of Foldable Flats
In 2012 Taffi Ayodele was working for a luxury brand in South Africa and had to attend many events in high heels. Being a true New Yorker, she kept a pair of foldable flats handy when she was on the go, and her African girlfriends were mesmerized by the concept. Her husband, J.G. Ayodele, did some…
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Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Milestone: 4.5 Hours With the President
Ta-Nehisi Coates, the Atlantic magazine writer, has managed a feat apparently accomplished by no other black journalist. He was granted 4½ hours on the record with President Obama, access he turned into a 17,000-word cover story for the January/February issue of the Atlantic. “Talked three times in person. Total of about 4.5 hours. No idea…
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Telling Our Truth in the Age of Trump
Brian Stelter, television critic for CNN Money, isn’t the only journalist sounding an alarm. “A question I asked on Sunday’s ‘Reliable Sources:’ he wrote in his email newsletter Sunday. “Is this a national emergency? And are journalists afraid to say so because they’re afraid they’ll sound partisan?” “Consider: A U.S. intelligence community conclusion that Russia…
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Watch: Trevor Noah on South African Apartheid, American Racism and What He Hopes to Offer the World
At the time he was born, Trevor Noah’s mere existence was a crime. The South African native grew up during apartheid—a bleak period in the nation’s past underscored by a white supremacist system intended to segregate and oppress the country’s nonwhite population. It was illegal for interracial couples to have intercourse. To say that Noah,…