culture
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King of Pain: 20 Years Later, Tupac Shakur’s Problematic Genius Still Haunts Us
The aphorism goes, “Stars are born, not made.” I understood this twice in childhood: the first time I saw Magic Johnson on television, and the moment in Digital Underground’s “Same Song” video when a resplendent Tupac Shakur burst into the public consciousness on a chariot, wearing a dashiki and kufi, and holding a scepter that…
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Can You Sue Your College? President Obama Says Yes You Can
When I was in college at the University of Virginia, every year they had an event called Spring Fling. Spring Fling (as opposed to the much colder, gloomier Fall Fling) was the visitation weekend for all African-American students who’d been accepted to UVA, and it was a huge party. There were big concerts and fashion…
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Black Solidarity With First Nations Is Complicated, Sacred and Necessary
I was born and raised as a descendant of enslaved Africans on Ute, Cheyenne and Arapaho land. I was born on the front range of the Rocky Mountains where Pike’s Peak’s massive snowcapped summit caused the sun to set 20 minutes earlier. Raised on a small family ranch with pigs, sheep and llamas, I grew…
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Hey, Michael Rapaport: Liking Hip-Hop Doesn’t Mean You Get to Tell Black People How to Feel
You know how this goes. You’re chilling, waiting for the bread and circuses that are the start of the NFL season, when your homie forwards you a link on Twitter, along with his own commentary: “Did you read this b.s.?” You know in your gut that some white person just said something dumb because ……
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What Does Nick Young Have to Do With Derrick Rose's Rape Allegations?
Nick Young is having a pretty bad year. In March, rookie Los Angeles Lakers point guard D’Angelo Russell secretly recorded Young talking about cheating on his then-fiancee Iggy Azalea. The recording was leaked and went viral, and Azalea dumped Young. Then a onetime teammate, being the friend that he is, posted a video of this…
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#Root4BlackFathers: Celebrating Black Fathers 365
After photos that Eric Owens posted on Facebook of him with his son recently began trending, there were many comments about the “emasculation” of black men from people who apparently weren’t held or hugged enough as children. So, just as we celebrated #BlackBoyJoy and dispelled dangerous myths about black fathers, The Root is keeping the party…
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White Advice for Black Protesters
Hello, angry black people! We, the members of the white delegation, have recently noticed an undercurrent of restlessness among the Negro population. As part of those outreach efforts, I have been dispatched here to teach the proper way to voice displeasure about the state of race relations in America before this discontent grows into a…
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We Need a New National Anthem; Here Are 10 Folks Who Could Do It
Despite going to graduate school in the discipline, my greatest education in philosophy happened at the barbershop. Old Man James, my barber since I was in elementary school, once hipped me to some game about the tension between blackness and patriotism in America. “Y’all still singing the national anthem in school, young blood?” he once…
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Seattle Seahawks #AllLivesMatter Protest Is an Act of Political Cowardice
Are you ready for some football? Are you ready for some flag-waving, solemn, 15th-anniversary-of-Sept. 11 remembrances? Are you ready for some Colin Kaepernick-inspired Black Lives Matter demonstrations by NFL players? If not, too bad, because you’re going to get all of those things when you tune in for any team’s NFL kickoff today, with the…
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A Love Story Interrupted by 9/11
Dennis Shortt remembers that morning as if it were yesterday. Whenever he found himself on the East Coast side of their Chicago-New York City romance, he usually beat his fiancee, Sharon Moore, up in the morning, even though she was the first to leave their Jamaica Estates apartment in the city’s Queens borough for work.…