culture
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One of the Worst Things White People Ever Did to Black People Happened This Week
I think we can all agree that the global, multinational enterprise called the trans-Atlantic slave trade, built on a business plan of kidnapping, torture and rape, is the worst thing white people ever did to black people. They wrote it into the Constitution. They codified it. They screamed for liberty and justice while blithely doing…
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‘Everyday It Rains’: A Root Editor’s Personal Struggle Through the Hell of Hurricane Harvey
Editor’s note: Yeats (or perhaps Achebe) was right: Things fall apart. And for The Root’s Senior Editor Kirsten West Savali, in the last year, those three words have become like a living mantra. At the beginning of the summer, West Savali, 37, and her husband, Savali Savali, 40, urgently uprooted their family of five (six, counting…
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The Root’s Clapback Mailbag: Beckys and Bad Suits
Once again, it’s Friday, which means it is time to sort through The Root’s mailbag and soak in our readers’ reactions to the content posted this week. It has been an interesting seven days here, and this week’s correspondence reveals an interesting mix of white tears, white fragility and butt-hurt Beckys. And yet we remain…
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How Do I Legally Prove Native American Ancestry?
For this week’s column, we decided to address a topic that comes up frequently in your questions: How does one legally establish Native American ancestry? Legal recognition as a tribal member varies depending on the Native American nation in which you seek enrollment. Native American communities are sovereign nations and, as such, have their own…
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Why Aren’t There More Black WWE Stars?
The first time I remember consciously turning on the TV to watch wrestling, I saw the Heartbreak Kid, Shawn Michaels, squaring off against Mike Tyson. I watched in confusion as the two superstars threatened to hit each other and Michaels ripped open Tyson’s shirt to the thunderous roar of the audience, indicating that they’d formed…
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Shit Might Hit the Fan in St. Louis Tomorrow
Chemists define an explosion as “a sudden, violent change of potential energy to work, which transfers to its surroundings in the form of a rapidly moving rise in pressure called a blast wave or shock wave. The shock wave can cause substantial damage.” I was there when Ferguson, Mo., exploded. When Officer Darren Wilson pumped…
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Mind Your Own Vagina: On Yvonne Orji, Adult Virgins and Personal Sexual Choices
When we say we want women to be free to make their own sexual choices, do we only mean that when the choice is one that we would make for ourselves? When we say that women should have agency over their own bodies, do we mean only if that agency is not influenced by other…
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Alt-White: On How White People Use Language to Deny the Existence of White Supremacy
Somewhere in the good ol’ book, there’s a saying that goes, “There is nothing new under the sun.” Now, I’m about six years removed from my last Sunday school class, but I’m pretty sure this concept also applies to a fairly old concept: Language. Now, I am not here to recount the origins of language…