culture
-
The Root’s Clapback Mailbag: No Free Lunch
This is a terrible time for our country. Our president has the IQ of a third-place Wheel of Fortune contestant. Hurricanes are making it rain across the United States like they’re Floyd Mayweather in a strip club. Kim Jong Un is strapping nuclear warheads on the backs of bottle rockets. Jason Whitlock has a brand-new…
-
Tracing Your Roots: Who Were My Grandparents?
Census records reveal clues to an African-American lineage stretching back in time to the years before slavery ended. Dear Professor Gates: My mother, Maggie Nell Lyons, is an only child. Her mother, Magnolia Battle, died when my mother was 5 years old. Magnolia Battle married Nelson Lyons, my grandfather. They lived, we think, in Gordon,…
-
7 Truisms Creatives Will Appreciate
Are you a creative? Do you create shit for a living? If you answered “yes” to either of those questions, you are a creative. If you are a creative (you answered “yes” to either of the two aforementioned questions), then I’d bet you a plum nickel that while people are happy for you and your…
-
There Is No Such Thing as ‘Alt-Left’
On July 5, 1969, a group of musicians waited in the wings in London’s Hyde Park before singing at a free concert. They were members of one of the most famous groups in the world. But the Beatles were bigger than they were. The Temptations would sell more records than they did that year. And…
-
Cardi B, Yay or Nay: GMG Staffers Share Their ‘Unpopular Opinions’ on America’s Unconventional Sweetheart
This is Unpopular Opinions, a romp through our staff’s personal Slack conversations that boldly reveals scandalous opinions that many would deem unpopular. So basically, it’s a conversation that proclaims, “We schaid what we schaid.” And this week’s topic of conversation is a woman whose name won’t stay off our tongues. Move over, *insert mediocre white…
-
7 Black Shows to Watch This Fall TV Season
The fall season is near, and I have to be honest: I don’t care about trees changing colors (I live in Los Angeles, where it’s green … everywhere), and pumpkin spice makes me as excited as a vegan lion. But what I am enthusiastic about is what autumn entertainment will bring. Whether it’s the return…
-
How 1 Black Woman Goes Inside Fla.’s Toughest Prisons to Help Inmates Get ‘Free on the Inside’
Facing a decade and a half in prison couldn’t stop her. Losing a loved one to suicide didn’t destroy her. Battling loss and pain while raising three children was not enough to make her quit. “Black Girl Magic” is a beautiful phrase. It summons up the image of some supernatural divination that has been arbitrarily…
-
Joel Osteen Sounds a Lot Like Donald Trump
Joel Osteen has been having a tough time; some of it due to Hurricane Harvey, which ravaged parts of Texas, and most of it due to his response to it and now-revisionist storytelling (can we say “lying” and not be struck down?), akin to the current president and resident liar in chief, Donald Trump. Let…