culture
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Black Music Month Playlist No. 5: We Made America Great in the 1st Place
Editor’s note: Every Friday for the month of June, aka African-American Music Appreciation Month, aka Black Music Month, we created a Spotify playlist based on the news of the week. Check out the stories behind playlist No. 1, playlist No. 2, playlist No. 3 and playlist No. 4. How fortuitous that the end of Black…
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Strong Enough for a Man, Made (as) a Woman: John McEnroe, Serena Williams and the Erasure of Black Female Excellence
“If [Serena] played the men’s circuit, she’d be, like, 700 in the world.” —John McEnroe “If I were a man, then it wouldn’t be any sort of question.” —Serena Williams John McEnroe cannot be serious. He couldn’t seriously think that he could question or attempt to qualify the greatness of the goddess known as Serena…
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Watch the Drones: Can Black Folks Benefit From the New World Order?
American business history is littered with stories of businesses that were started by, or profit off of, black folks but ritually lock us out. The black community spends billions on hair-care products, but most of the stores and companies we buy from aren’t for us or by us. African Americans drive the music industry, but…
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Browns Are the New Nudes When It Comes to Beauty and Fashion for Women of Color
Back in college, I attempted the silliest thing ever after shopping for bras. I couldn’t find a caramel-colored bra for the life of me, so I decided to get a white bra and attempt to dye it brown, or the closest color I could get to caramel. You see, if you were a brown-skinned woman, the…
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Black Music Month: The Transition of Mali Is Super Woke and Super Black
Maybe you’ve heard his name or seen his beautifully brown face across your feeds. One thing is certain—the minute you hear Mali’s voice, you know it’s not to be forgotten. Mali is a soul singer who uses his art not only to tell the stories of black people but also to shake us awake. Mali’s…
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I Listened to Chris Brown and Ray J’s Mixtape so You Don’t Have To
When I read that Chris Brown and Ray J had released a new mixtape, Burn My Name, my immediate response was, “Have we not suffered enough already in Trump’s America?” That’s not to say Light Ike isn’t talented, Team Breezy. That has long been established. It’s more like, “You’re Chris Brown and you’re doing a…
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Philando Castile Settlement Shows White America Willingly Pays for White Supremacy
White America has always shown a willingness and a boundless patience when it comes to paying for white supremacy. Not in the moral sense or the spiritual sense or the greater-good-for-mankind sense, but in the actual dollars-and-cents sense. Racial discrimination is actually rather expensive and has been throughout time. Slavery was expensive and borderline inefficient,…
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Is Airbnb Turning NYC’s Brooklyn White? Airbnb Responds
Editor’s note: A quote by Murray Cox has been added to provide full context. Updated Tuesday, June 27, 2017, 1:38 p.m. EDT: On Monday The Root published this original article, which used data to argue that the home-sharing company Airbnb is being used as a tool for gentrification in Brooklyn, N.Y. After the article was…
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The NFL’s Race Problem Is Deeper Than Colin Kaepernick
The NFL has a race problem. This certainly sounds ludicrous on its face. How can an organization with so many recognizable black stars have a race problem? In short, the NFL serves as a case study for the difference between inclusion and representation. Want to annihilate yourselves for our amusement? Cool. Want to promote the…
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Watch: A Brief History of Jazz by Some of the Genre’s Freshest Faces
So, what, exactly, is jazz? We know it’s black music, we know that many of the artists of the genre are political. But how does one define an art form so heavily based on improvisation and live instrumentation? Better question: Is jazz dead? The Root asked three fresh faces in jazz to school us on…