Self-hatred is nothing to laugh about—neither are delusional tendencies. That said, there was something so surreal about the spectacle of a 16-year-old black girl named Treasure insisting she was white on Dr. Phil’s unbelievably long-running talk show on Wednesday that The Root staff couldn’t help but shake our heads…

In one of his recent daily missives via TMZ (do the Jenner-Kardashians partially own that site?) Kanye West said he was getting off the Twitters; alas, he has not.

I need your help. I’ll tell you what kind at the end of this piece.

When you don’t listen to your body, your body has a way of forcing you to listen. Or at least that’s what my body does, over and over again, from annoying to terrifying effect. When you suffer from stress-induced anxiety, as I do and have since I was a child, you get a host of stress-related illnesses to go with it.

Theodora Marie is my mother. She is one-half of an identical twinship forged in Grandmother’s womb some 66 years ago. Teddie is a fiery Sagittarius, an old-school nationalist and my very first love.

Recently, Damon Young of VSB wrote a tongue-in-cheek piece about why black folk should never, ever, ever, ever, ever call the police. And though—as black folk are wont to do—Young used humor to explicate a tragic reality, it is cases like Charleena Lyles’ that drive this home.

Often, after an intense therapy appointment, instead of sitting in my car, folded across the steering wheel before I have the strength to face the rest of the day, I make a detour to the T.J. Maxx on the way home. I don’t always buy anything; I just wander the racks and flip through organized chaos, waiting for my…

This story is becoming frighteningly more common and ever more distressing. A person calls 911 to help a loved one in a mental-health crisis, and said loved one is then shot and killed by police. Sometimes the person is “armed” with a bat or a knife, sometimes not.

“Powerful black men like Chris Lighty don’t shoot themselves. It makes no sense, but somehow there he was, lying in the casket with a bullet in his skull.” This statement, shared by Reggie Ossé, captured many of our original thoughts when learning that hip-hop mogul Chris Lighty died from an apparent suicide in 2012.

We’re living in a DIY culture, and there’s no one more DIY than bloggers. Blogging is a means of communication, self-expression, culture, news and so much more. And the people who create blogs are typically ridiculously talented and effortlessly wear the responsibility of being a voice for their culture.