Clapback/Mailbag

In 1951, the great American poet Langston Hughes, in his poem, “Harlem,” asked: What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry uplike a raisin in the sun?Or fester like a sore—And then run?Does it stink like rotten meat?Or crust and sugar over—like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sagslike a heavy load. Or does…

For too long, the writers at The Root have ignored the plight of those whose labor goes unrecognized and unheralded. In our fight for equality and justice, we have forgotten one outstanding group of Americans who are willing to lay their lives on the line. But that ends today. Today’s Clapback Mailbag is dedicated to…

Happy New Year! In 2020, we will be doing something different with the mailbag. Don’t worry: the mailbag will still come every Friday. We’ll still answer a selection of emails, tweets, DMs and comments from our readers. We will continue to fuel the mailbag with white tears. But this year, we’re also going to respond…

For the last mailbag of 2019, we chose an email, a tweet, a DM and a comment that all ask the same question: Why are we so racist? How can we use the slur “wypipo” while condemning their use of the n-word? How can we make jokes about our Caucasian constituency? Wouldn’t we call them…

“The Clapback Song”: Nikes roasting on an open firePete Buttigieg lying through his noseJonas Brothers singing Earth Wing & FireWhite people in plantation wedding photos Everybody knows, that phone call to Ukraine was badAnd what they did to Kaepernick ain’t rightBut white people are spitting madBecause a MAGA jaw got broken in a fight. They…

Whenever someone asks if writing the weekly Clapback Mailbag ever gets old, I tell them that receiving and reading notes from people telling me why I’m so wrong can sometimes be annoying. But, to be fair, it’s not the receiving part that bothers me; I rather enjoy responding to our readers. But reading poorly punctuated…

Each Friday, we wade through our emails, tweets, comments and DMs to respond to readers who are searching for feedback, validation or someone at whom they can scream the n-word without being slapped like they stole something. But not this week. When the pair of articles about Mayor Pete Buttigieg came out last week, there…

I don’t know if you heard about it, but I wrote something pretty controversial this week. I’ve always wondered how some people could live in a country so rife with inequality and racism and somehow conclude that race and whiteness had absolutely nothing to do with it, which was exactly why I wrote what I…