blacks and mental illness
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Patrisse Cullors, Reform LA Jails Lead the Charge to Decriminalize Mental Health with #CancelMcCarthyContract Campaign
For years, activist and community organizer Patrisse Cullors has poured her passion for the people into cofounding movements and coalitions such as Black Lives Matter and Reform LA Jails. But with the announcement of her #CancelMcCarthyContract campaign comes one of her biggest challenges yet—the fight for the mental health and wellbeing of incarcerated individuals. As…
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Chicago Prosecutors Drop Charges Against Cop Said to Be Caught on Video Beating Man Undergoing Psych Eval
Attorneys for a man whose vicious beating, allegedly by a Chicago cop, was captured on surveillance video are calling out Chicago’s Cook County prosecutor’s office for deciding to drop all charges against the cop. “I think anyone could look at that video and make a determination that it’s excessive force,” Andrew M. Stroth, a lawyer…
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Man Pleads Guilty to Throwing 5-Year-Old Boy Over Railing at Mall of America; Faces 19 Years
Emmanuel D. Aranda, the 24-year-old Minneapolis man charged with hurling a little boy over a third-floor railing at the Mall of America in a random attack last month, pleaded guilty to the crime Tuesday. Aranda is to be sentenced in June to 19 years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of attempted first-degree…
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Taraji P. Henson Tears Up Describing Mental Health in the Black Community as a 'National Crisis'
Taraji P. Henson has been doing the work, the work to end the stigma surrounding mental illness in the black community. The urgency of the issue brought her to tears while she was being honored for her efforts at Variety magazine’s Power of Women New York lunch. In September, Henson launched the Boris Lawrence Henson…
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‘I’m White,’ Obviously Black Teenager Tells Dr. Phil
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 confusion and laugh uncomfortably. We…
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Ye Stay Oblivious: Hands Out Yeezys to Dictator, Orphans in Uganda
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. Ye and his wife Kim Kardashian, and eldest daughter, North West, are in the East African nation of Uganda to record and complete his next album,…
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My Pain. Our Pain: Help Me Help the Mentally Ill Survive Police Interactions Without Being Killed
I need your help. I’ll tell you what kind at the end of this piece. But first I need to tell you a story: One day, I got a call from my Aunt Pat—my mother’s identical twin. Or maybe the call was from my mother—her voice pained. Panicked. Frantic. It’s all a blur now. I…
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Autopsy Shows Pregnant, Mentally Ill Woman Charleena Lyles Shot 7 Times by Police
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. Lyles was a 30-year-old black woman and mother…