culture
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Being Mary Jane Recap: Is Justin Setting Up M.J.? You Be the Judge
New phone, who dis? Do we even recognize who this Justin is? Or can we even trust that the man who has so coolly thrown Mary Jane under the bus at every opportunity is now supporting and backing her against Ronda and their boss Garrett? It’s almost unbelievable to think that this might be a…
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The Liberator: Susan Burton on the War on Drugs, Black Motherhood and Freedom [Retracted]
RETRACTED (6/12/18): This story has been removed because we have discovered it was in breach of our editorial standards. If you’d like to know more, you can read an editor’s note here. A cached version of the story is available here for transparency.
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Black-Led TV Shows Have Always Had Crossover Appeal; So Why the Side-Piece Treatment?
Earlier this month, Nielsen unveiled a study examining the broader appeal of black-led and/or -focused content—particularly in television. It begins with acknowledgment that black people play a pivotal role in shaping various sectors of popular culture in the U.S. In its findings, “73 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 67 percent of Hispanics believe that African…
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Don’t Hurt Yourself: Unicorns Aren’t Real and You’re Not a Special Snowflake
Many moons ago, fresh off an unexpected achievement and gaining a toehold in both the music industry and the fun, freewheeling network that was once Twitter, I decided to celebrate my unlikely success with the social media tagline, “Just your average Grammy-nominated goddess next door … may I borrow some sugar?” Playful? Yes. Obnoxious? Perhaps;…
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The Latest Leslie Jones White-Tears Controversy
Leslie Jones is the latest target in the new epidemic of wypipo pearl-clutching and getting outraged at comedians for telling jokes. During her latest stand-up performance at Carolines on Broadway, Jones, the New York Times reports, told the story of when online troll and pedophile advocate Milo Yiannopoulos attacked her and inspired his “alt-right” minions…
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To Be Held by Moonlight
There was no church scene. There were no tambourines or drums, no preachers loudly proclaiming Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6:9. There were no flamboyant choir directors, teenagers named Arthur or bluesmen named Jimmy; no John or Gabriel Grimes; no Elishas. Yet, this film, Moonlight, directed by Barry Jenkins, could’ve been James Baldwin’s,…
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Living With History: Harriet Tubman’s Great-Great-Grandniece Wants Black History Celebrated Every Month
Editor’s note: For Black History Month, The Root is speaking to the relatives of our most cherished African-American heroes in a series called Living With History. To open the series, we interviewed a descendant of Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. Next, we did a Q&A with the descendants of Ida B. Wells, and last…
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From ‘ShETHER’ to Just Blaze vs. Swizz Beatz to Mysonne’s Freestyle, It Was a Great Week to Be a Hip-Hop Head
Although science has yet to chart the lunar moons of hip-hop, every so often the bling from 2Pac’s shiny-gold-bathtub era passes from behind the shade of Big L’s New York Yankees “fitted,” and the heavenly eclipse gives us a brief glow of what hip-hop used to be. This happened this past week, when hip-hop purists…
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Who Could, Should and Will Win at the 89th Academy Awards
I have a complicated relationship with the Academy Awards. As I’ve said before, when we need the approval and validation of the dominant group in order for us to see our own work as valuable, we engage in a form of internalized racism that centers whiteness even as we engage in the subversive work of…
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Cheryl Boone Isaacs Put the Oscars on a Path Toward Diversity. Will Her Successor Continue the Trend?
Tonight’s 89th annual Academy Awards will be very different from last year’s broadcast or even the year before. In 2015 and 2016, there were no black actors or actors of color nominated in any acting categories. One of the reasons activist April Reign was so successful in launching her #OscarsSoWhite movement in protest was that…