culture
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Happy Confederate Day! On Lynching Memorials and Winning the Narrative War
On Monday, Alabama is set to observe Confederate Memorial Day, commemorating the sons of the South killed in the Civil War. No surprise there. Alabama loves fighting with Mississippi for the title of “most racist state” (though they actually may be running neck and neck with “everything south of the Canadian border,” if we’re keeping…
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HBCU SpringComing Brings Black-School Spirit to New York City
Homecoming is traditionally a time for alums to return to their alma mater, kick it with old friends and pay respect to the institutions that (presumably) meant so much to them as graduates. For the alumni who showed up at HBCU SpringComing this past weekend, it’s like they never left. Lauren Grant and George Twopointoh…
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Don Cheadle Talks Social Media and How He Deals With Trolls
For many years, Don Cheadle has received massive praise for both his dramatic acting chops in works like Hotel Rwanda, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for best actor, and his comedic ability in the series House of Lies, for which he received a Golden Globe. Not only is he a beast…
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It Be Your Own People: On Universal FanCon and the Perversion of Community
My mother, God bless her (she’s still around, but still), grew up in a certain village in rural Nigeria. And to survive this upbringing, she had to adopt some beliefs, behaviors and coping mechanisms that would seem paranoid to untrained and Americanized eyes like mine. One of these behaviors was continuously forbidding me and my…
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The New Lynching Memorial and Legacy Museum Force Us to Bear Witness to Our Whole American Truth
It’s time to take this story to the masses.It’s time to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.May the other side of his-story now be entered into the record, the narrative, the myth of these United States of America. Forever and ever. Amen. “We love talking about 19th-century history and not…
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Starbucks Tapped Public Policy, Racial-Justice Organizations to Help With Bias Training, but What Will Change Look Like?
After the arrest of two black men in a Philadelphia Starbucks for simply existing, the ubiquitous coffee chain immediately stepped forward, implementing swift action in a bid to combat racial bias. As part of its initiative to fight discrimination, Starbucks announced that it would close all stores nationwide on May 29 to provide more than…
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‘Genocide of Black People’: The Killing of Afro-Brazilians by Police Is an Injustice Marielle Franco Was Fighting to End
They walked 2.5 miles to the site of her assassination, all the while dancing, chanting and crying. On that hot and muggy night on April 14 in Rio de Janeiro, more than 3,000 people gathered at the center of Rio to demand police action in the murder of Afro-Brazilian politician Marielle Franco and to mark…
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Tracing Your Roots: Who Left My Mother in Foster Care?
After five wonderful, fun years of helping African Americans find their ancestry on The Root, we are looking forward to carrying on the work of the Tracing Your Roots column through an ongoing collaboration with AmericanAncestors.org by the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Our new column will appear on AmericanAncestors.org and the related blog Vita-Brevis.org.…
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Universal Fan ‘Con’? A Conversation With Black Girl Nerds’ Jamie Broadnax on the Biggest Black Convention That Wasn’t
Remember Fyre Festival, that “high end” event in 2017 that was supposed to be Girls Gone Wild mixed with Coachella but ended up being a millennial version of Naked and Afraid, with hundreds of people spending thousands of dollars to end up trapped on an island eating bologna sandwiches? Remember how, even though the real…