black culture
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Ailey, Ascending: Alvin Ailey’s Company Celebrates 60 Years of Dance with a New Work Honoring Its Founder
How do you celebrate six decades of groundbreaking dance? If you’re the legendary Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, you stage a yearlong anniversary celebration titled “Ailey Ascending,” with a star-studded gala and new ballet as its centerpiece. Launching its five-week holiday season in New York City on Wednesday, Nov. 28, the company, founded by choreographer…
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For the Culture: 2018's Pop Culture Becomes Halloween's Most Popular Costumes
Fun fact: I’ve been low-key lobbying for us, just once, to turn The Root 100 into a costume party, where all of the guests and honorees are expected to come as their favorite black historical figure or pop cultural reference. After all, our annual gala takes place close to Halloween—and it’d be an understatement to…
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Twitter’s Jack Dorsey Doesn’t Know What #OnHere Means
A funny thing happens when white people attempt to co-opt black slang while simultaneously misinterpreting what the slang they are trying to co-opt actually means. They usually end up looking silly, and even when actual black ass people come through and try to point out where they went wrong, they willfully—and often times ignorantly—defend their…
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Non-Compliant: The War Against Black Students' Hairstyles Continues
When it comes to finding low-maintenance hairstyles for our children that are school-appropriate, it’s beginning to seem we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t. Last week, a video of a first-grader in Florida being turned away from his first day of school because of his dreadlocks sparked viral outrage and discussion; this week,…
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Did Rihanna Appropriate 'Chola' Brows? One Latina Writer Thinks So
When Rihanna debuted literally pencil-thin brows for her history-making September cover of British Vogue, the general response was one of awe—and fear that the look was coming back. Rihanna (who requested the look) told editor-in-chief Edward Enninful that she considered skinny brows “ladylike … but punk.” But while many of us saw references to the…
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Black Model on Vogue's IG Responds to Troll Who Complained About Too Many 'Ghetto People'
Apparently, Vogue Magazine’s readers and followers are all white, so when they see black women being represented, they immediately wonder why “ghetto people” are being shown because it’s “not like vogue at all.” Maybe that’s why, when model Salem Mitchell was featured on Vogue’s Instagram page relaxing on the beach in a red one-piece and…
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Judge of Characters: Wypipo, Stop Killing Everything Fun
Wypipo have an inane ability to zero in on things that were once cool or hot (depending on who you ask) and make them wack. Case in point, that time Donald Trump Jr. used “lit” on Twitter to talk about Justice Kennedy’s retirement. Now that “lit” is dead, I was thinking about what else colonizers…
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Oprah Winfrey Celebrated With New Exhibition at National Museum of African American History and Culture
Who is more iconic in contemporary black history than Oprah Winfrey? That was a trick question, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture is celebrating the media powerhouse and trailblazer as such, launching a new exhibition that is all about Winfrey. According to the Washington Post, the new exhibition, titled, “Watching Oprah:…
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Watch: Terry Larrier Is Walking by Faith, Not Sight
It takes more than a dream to get to the NBA. Former University of Connecticut small forward Terry Larrier learned that lesson early in life. “Some kids come to college with a career goal. Some want to be a doctor or a lawyer. I want to be a professional basketball player,” Larrier told The Root.…
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Watch: Embracing the Otherness With Unreal’s Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman
Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman is an other. He’s a biracial, queer man who was adopted and raised in a teeny-tiny town in Alberta, Canada, where he was the only person of color. So yeah, Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman stood out. “I was the other. I was different than everybody else around me and I was told what I was,”…