Alexandra Shipp will not be censored. The 27-year-old actress was best known for her roles in the 2014 biopic, Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B and 2015’s Oscar-nominated Straight Outta Compton before being cast as Marvel superhero Storm in 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse; but Shipp sparked a storm of her own on social media…
The airlines are back at it again, with Southwest being accused of demanding that a white mother prove that her infant biracial son was indeed her own.
Eight years ago I got a Facebook message that said, “Do you remember me?” I was prepping for a staff meeting and couldn’t place the name or the blond woman in the icon. I shot back a quick sorry that I didn’t remember her and turned my back to the computer. When I turned around, I lost my breath. “I think I’m your…
My mother and I recently decided to do DNA kits together in honor of Mother’s Day. (Please don’t @ me with warnings about how our information will be used; we’re grown, neither of us is a serial killer, and genealogy searches have taken us only so far.) Since we’re decidedly African American and slavery was not a…
All my life I had to fight. That’s not true, but you can’t say “all my life” and NOT add “I had to fight” if you’re black and over a certain age. Shoutouts to The Color Purple and Miss Sophia. Hey, Oprah, boo.
I got my results back from AncestryDNA. About damn time, too. I was like a crackhead, checking my email every single day HOPING I’d get an email letting me know that my results were ready and available, and every day there’d be nothing. At some point, I almost called them like they were holding up my tax refund and…
Anna Holmes, the founder of Jezebel and editorial director at Topic.com, recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times titled, “Black With (Some) White Privilege.” Full disclosure: I’m part of a currently running, very interesting and insightful documentary series she executive-produced called The Loving Generation, …
When you meet someone who identifies as biracial, what do you see? An imposter? A person in denial? A person who wants to acknowledge every part of themselves? Someone who wants to name a very specific experience? Or someone longing to place themselves adjacent to whiteness?
Like many, we here at The Root have been having somewhat heated (I don’t know who was typing in all caps) discussion about Meghan Markle, the 36-year-old actress currently betrothed to Prince Harry, fifth in line to the British throne.
I am often asked about my name. “Nabil. It’s an Arabic name,” I’ll say. “It means noble, learned and generous,” which usually demands further interest.
Skin color both unites and divides us. Whether you live in India, East Africa or Japan, the color of your skin shapes your identity and opportunities. Color Complex is a narrative series that explores how people of color around the world struggle for visibility and learn to navigate the prejudices and social…
I remember, with painful clarity, the time I ached to be white. I mean that literally, by the way. I stuck a clothespin on my nose when I was about 6 years old, hoping to shape that flat, Filipino knob of flesh into a more aquiline point. That shit hurt and, even worse, it didn’t work.
Nancy Wirths received an anonymous, racist letter Monday stating that black people were not welcome in her Wichita, Kan., neighborhood, KSN.com reports.
"'Passing' describes the choice to identify as a member of another racial group rather than face social prejudice,” writes Sil Lai Abrams in her memoir, Black Lotus: A Woman’s Search for Racial Identity. “Today the term is used almost exclusively to describe black people who consciously adopt a white identity.”
Who is Bow Wow?
1. Taye Diggs believes you are an idiot. And yes, "you" encapsulates literally any and every person who happens to be reading this. If you are reading this — or, if you're not reading this and just happen to be alive somewhere breathing air or eating Baja Fresh — Taye Diggs believes that you're a nincompoop. A fool. A…
