culture
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The Real Reason the Ravens Are Afraid to Hire Kaepernick: He’s Mr. Steal-Your-Job
The good news is that Baltimore’s unemployment rate is a breathtakingly low 6.1 percent in August of 2017; the bad news is, there’s one job applicant who just can’t seem to get a break in Charm City: Colin Kaepernick. News broke this week that because starting quarterback Joe Flacco suffered a back injury, the Baltimore…
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Okra Is Garbage and Zoodles Are Lies: GMG Staffers Share Their ‘Unpopular Opinions’ on Healthy Eats
This is Unpopular Opinions, a weekly romp through the Gizmodo Media Group staff’s personal Slack conversations that boldly reveal scandalous opinions that many would deem unpopular. So, basically it’s a conversation that proclaims, We schaid what we schaid. Everybody and their mamas have either seen or have plans to see What the Health, a documentary…
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Someone Trolled Me With Racist Emails for a Week, and It Brought Me So Much Joy!
A few weeks ago, we began the inaugural Wypipo World Tournament that pitted the worst wypipo in the world against one another. When this idea first emerged, there was a very intense meeting that ended—as most meetings at The Root do—with, “OK, Mike, you piss wypipo off all the time. You do it.” I didn’t…
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Trans Black Women Are Petitioning Charlamagne tha God Over Transphobic Comments on Show
The only way to convince Charlamagne tha God to stop allowing transphobia on his show is to threaten his job security, as far as black transgender female activists I spoke with are concerned. And, while, no, Charlamagne didn’t talk about killing trans women, Ashlee Marie Preston said that Charlamagne was the ringleader of Lil Duval’s…
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#SafetyIs: Night Out for Safety and Liberation Happening Tonight
For working-class and poor black and brown communities in the United States of America, the concept of safety—particularly when it is dependent on hypermilitarized police forces—is a flimsy, dangerous illusion. One move, one word—or no moves and no words—standing, running, driving or breathing have all been charges leveled against black and brown people and deemed…
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The 2017 World Wypipo Tournament, Final Round: Who Is the Worst of the Worst?
Ladies and gentlemen, today we come to you from historic Shea Moisture Coliseum to bring you the championship matchup of the first-ever World Wypipo Tournament. Over the course of this single-elimination tournament, we have watched some of the greatest Caucasian competitors from around the globe fight for wypipo supremacy. Sixty-four hopeful teams entered this epic…
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Broke Becky, Pap Smears and Why I’m Afraid of White Women
No one ever taught me about Emmett Till. When I was 11 years old, I was sitting in a room filled with black men at my uncle’s New Jersey apartment. As they joked around with one another in the bawdy way men are apt to do when they’re by themselves, a traditionally attractive white woman…
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Sunday’s Game of Thrones Was a Message to Black America
For three weeks, we have preached about how Game of Thrones teaches us everything we need to know about white America. So, this week, you might expect us to joke about how Sansa should’ve cooked for Bran when he came home from that long road trip, or how Euron Greyjoy is turning into Anthony Scaramucci.…
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On Rape Culture and Men’s Empathy
With days left of college, a close friend of mine was drugged at a party. What followed was a sequence of events about which my friends have praised and thanked me. Looking back, the minimal aid for which I was responsible was tinged with a tacit acceptance of rape culture from the onset. My apologies…
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NYC Together Is Building a Bridge Between 2 Groups That Seem Diametrically Opposed: Teens and Cops
Community and police relationships have been strained in recent years, to put it lightly. The two groups have apparently reached a stalemate, with communities furious over the recent slate of officer-involved shootings—when all too often the officers walk away with barely a reprimand—and with the police feeling as if they are being unfairly attacked. Neither…