Opinion
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Black People Are Fighting Against Gentrification and for the Heart and Soul of Their Cities
Last week at the corner of 14 and U, a throng of mostly black people swayed in unison to the beat of a live go-go band. The drums and horns blasted as people walked from near and far to not only hear their indigenous music but also to join the resistance. The band and its…
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A Tale of Two Churches: How the Notre Dame Cathedral Illustrates America's Unwillingness to Acknowledge Black Suffering
Police gun down so many black men, I can’t even recall which one is the impetus for this story. But a few years ago, after yet another one of us was mowed down in the street in cold blood, I arrived to my TV writers room in a less than pleasant mood. I was tired.…
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T.I., Tank, The Game, Call for Firing of Fox News Host Laura Ingraham After Mocking Memorial of Nipsey Hussle
Beloved recording artist, entrepreneur and community activist Nipsey Hussle wasn’t even buried for 24 hours before Fox News trotted out host Laura Ingraham to spit on his grave. During a segment on her show The Ingraham Angle, the Wicked Witch of the West made a mockery out of a murder victim—because Fox News is in…
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Black in Boston
I’m from Boston. Boston doles out its racist vitriol like paper-cuts. It’s not Confederate flags on mud flaps and SS tattoos (unless you date white girls from New Hampshire), it’s smiling pastors’ wives telling you how scary you look until you smile, days before your 14th birthday, when Rubik’s cubes make more sense than girls,…
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The Root’s Clapback Mailbag: Something New Every Day
I need your help. While browsing through the emails, tweets and DMs for the clapback mailbag, I learn a lot about myself. This week I discovered that I am involved with a lot of extracurricular agendas. Here is the list: The gay agenda The leftist agenda Black Lives Matter terrorists The “real racists” Globalists The…
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Brexit Reporter Declares He’s ‘Never Seen So Many White People in One Place.’ The Lie Detector Determined … That’s a Lie
Earlier in life then we probably realize, black people are taught the value of compartmentalizing our personas. While we take comfort in Wobbling at weddings and selectively blurting out “Ain’t nobody coming to see you, Otis!” around our own, we have a propensity to abandon the seasoning rack while amongst our unseasoned companions. Our speaking…
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How Raising Multiethnic Kids Reshaped My Blackness
My wife is not black. Our daughters, by no choice of their own, are. Not when we’re at home or with friends and family or surrounded by people who know and love them. But when they’re out in the world, with their bronze skin and curly afros, when they’re seen from afar or described by…
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On the Anniversary of MLK Jr.’s Assassination, We Should Heed King’s Economic Roadmap to Reparations
In a 1968 speech just prior to his death on April 4, Martin Luther King Jr. appeared to articulate the next phase of the fight for equality in America. It wasn’t focused on equal rights or the plight of African Americans in education in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education—it focused on black…
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White People Didn't Do This: On Nipsey Hussle and Conspiracy Theories
A few years ago, someone told writer Anna Merlan that I would be a good person to interview for a book she was working on about conspiracy theories. When she informed me that she was going to dedicate a chapter to black conspiracies, I was startled to find out that she had never heard of…
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White-on-White Crime: Trump Supporter Aggressively Heckles News Reporter on Camera at Political Event
When you work in journalism, you come to expect that you are going to encounter your fair amount of trolls as you go about your daily job. They are out there, and they are ready to heckle you at every turn—whether their opinions about what you are reporting on are based in fact or not.…