culture
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The National Interest: All Money Ain’t Good Money: The Role of White Foundations in Social Justice Movements
Editor’s note: Once a month, the National Interest column will tackle broader questions about what the country should do to increase educational opportunities for black youths. There are wealthy white philanthropists in every city saying that they want to change urban education, but few are able to save their own organizations from whiteness. That’s because…
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Jemele Hill and Michael Smith Are Taking Over SportsCenter, and Somewhere, Stuart Scott Is Smiling
Even if you aren’t the biggest sports fan, you may have heard of Michael Smith and Jemele Hill. His & Hers, which began as a podcast conceived and hosted by Smith and Hill, proved so popular that in 2014 it replaced the ESPN2 show Numbers Never Lie, which Smith began co-hosting with Charissa Thompson in…
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Living With History: Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington Heir Saw the Burden and Beauty of His Ancestors’ Legacies
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. Today we feature Kenneth B. Morris Jr., a descendant of abolitionist Frederick Douglass and educator Booker T. Washington, and spoke to him about how the family are keeping their…
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Kassandra Frederique, Drug Policy Alliance’s Black History Month Series Visionary, Talks Owning Our Narratives [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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Nicki Minaj to Giuseppe Zanotti: Quit Being Racist and #RunMeMyCHECK
Never one to back down from a good fight (see “Miley, what’s good?”), Nicki Minaj took to Twitter to get in Giuseppe Zanotti’s ass after the Italian designer debuted a new sneaker collection with her name but didn’t pay the curvy rapper any coins. Zanotti’s new “Nicki” sneakers retail for $675 and are “pink python-printed…
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Obama Commuted Evans Ray’s Life Sentence; Now Ray Wants to Help Others Like Himself
Evans Ray knew he’d made a horrible mistake when he was caught distributing some 60 grams of crack cocaine. He also didn’t believe that the punishment should have been life in prison. But two prior low-level drug convictions ensured that in 2004, Ray would get the max with no possibility of parole. Even the judge…
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Please Stop Your Whiny Diatribes; Academic Achievement Is Not ‘Acting White’
Midway through reading Boluwaji Ogunyemi’s New York Times essay “When ‘Black Like Me’ Means ‘White Like Them,’” I needed to find a napkin. I had to wipe the drool from my mouth after falling asleep from reading yet another essay that centered on the age-old myth that black people are betraying their cultural identities when…