culture
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Princeton Professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Cancels Public Appearances Amid Fox News-Fueled Death Threats
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, assistant professor of African-American studies at Princeton and a 2016 The Root 100 honoree, has been forced to cancel all public appearances as death threats continue to roll in in response to her May 20 commencement address at Hampshire College, a private liberal arts college in Amherst,…
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Cavaliers vs. Warriors 3: LeBron May Not Catch Jordan, but He’s Better Than Kobe
I have no idea who’s going to win the NBA Finals. I don’t even know if part 3 of the Warriors-vs.-Cavaliers trilogy is going to be any good. For every Dark Knight, Bourne Identity or Iron Man trilogy, there’s an Austin Powers or Star Wars prequel trilogy. What I do know is this: No matter…
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Noose Found Hanging at National Museum of African American History and Culture
Tourists visiting the an exhibition on segregation at the National Museum of African American History and Culture on Wednesday found a noose hanging there, the second such incident on the Smithsonian grounds this week. According to Smithsonian Magazine, the exhibit gallery was closed for three hours as police investigated the noose and removed it. In…
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The Carmichael Show Is Back, and Jerrod Carmichael Says It Will Continue Confronting Black Conversations You Don’t See on TV
The Carmichael Show is easily one of the best black shows on television right now. It stars its namesake and creator, Jerrod Carmichael, as a son, brother and fiance who is not only opinionated but often finds himself in the crossfire of the even stronger opinions of his family. In the first two seasons, we…
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Meet ‘Y’all Qaeda,’ the Right-Wing Militias a Republican Wants to Hire for Security
A Portland, Ore., leader responded to a white supremacist terrorist attack in his city by offering an interesting solution to the recent rise of violence by right-wing extremists: He wants to hire more right-wing extremists. After authorities say 35-year-old Jeremy Christian stabbed to death Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche and Rick Best on a Portland train Friday,…
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Everything You Need to Know About the Retrial of the Cop Who Killed Sam Dubose and Is Getting Away With It
Hamilton County, Ohio, Judge Leslie Ghiz delayed jury selection Tuesday in the retrial of Ray Tensing, the police officer who shot Sam Dubose during a 2015 traffic stop. After Ghiz severely restricted media access to the trial, an Ohio appeals court granted a request filed by the Associated Press and other news outlets to…
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LaKeisha, Where Art Thou? The Case for ‘Black Sounding’ Names
Recently I played host to my niece’s 5th-birthday party. It was a backyard paint-themed affair where all the babies were dressed like pint-size Picassos in smocks and berets and hyped up on confectioners’ sugar. It was somewhere between the dance-off and “Red light, green light” that I realized something. There were no Keishas here. There…
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Congrats, Lifetime Made a Michael Jackson TV Movie That Was Not Terrible
I thought the Michael Jackson: Searching for Neverland movie was going to be some trash. With all due respect to Lifetime, the network gave us the horrible Aaliyah biopic and the not-as-awful-but-close-enough movie about the life of Whitney Houston. I wouldn’t be surprised if either one of their ghosts was still haunting all of the…
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Videos of Racists Being Racist Go Viral, and Then What?
Roses are red, violets are blue, America is full of racists, what else is new? That was my initial feeling when recently greeted by two videos floating around Al Gore’s Internet featuring two separate instances of overt racism. The other was curiosity over how that loudmouthed woman in Walmart or that wheelchair-bound man who reminded…
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Unlike Most of Y’all, I Like Katy Perry’s New Songs, but …
When I heard Katy Perry’s Migos-featuring single, “Bon Appétit,” I was too busy body rolling to join a lot of y’all in the latest online protest. Likewise, I took a “Don’t nobody bring me no bad news” stance when it came to reports about Perry making jokes about former President Barack Obama. In Saddle Tan…