culture
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Watch: Wendell Pierce Explains How He Prepared for the Role of Justice Clarence Thomas
On Saturday, April 16, HBO will air Confirmation, a film that retells the story of Clarence Thomas’ 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Justice Thomas is being played by Wendell Pierce, who stopped by The Root’s offices to chat about the film. Pierce told The Root, “We’re retelling this story 25 years later because there’s a…
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Stevie J Was Once a Super Producer; Now He’s Just a Cheating, Ex-Stripper-Loving, Homophobic Dad
What comes to mind when you think of Stevie J? To be kind, I’ll start off with “musician.” After all, he did work on the legendary Mariah Carey’s Butterfly album. OK, enough of that. Thanks to Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta, when I think of Stevie J, I primarily think, “man with penis that suffers…
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Rock ’n’ Roll Isn’t a ‘Nonblack’ Thing: How Racial Stereotypes Almost Ruined My Good Time
I love rock music, especially heavy metal. I blast it as I drive down the road and I mosh in concert pits. Rock ‘n’ roll is not a “nonblack” thing. Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Lenny Kravitz, Little Richard … hellooooo. So when my friend Ish asked if I liked Ozzy Osbourne, I replied, “Hellz yeah.”…
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Modern Renaissance Man: Hyundai’s Newest Executive, Erwin Raphael
Erwin Raphael, the new U.S. general manager for Hyundai’s luxury brand, Genesis, specializes in challenges, whether in manufacturing, sales, math—or handling lions. “It’s a lot easier to train a lion than give life to a lamb,” Raphael says, quoting one of his many mentors. He’s talking about dealing with an employee he describes as being “on…
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Why Underground’s Rosalee and Noah Have the Best Black Relationship on TV
After Wednesday night’s episode of WGN’s new hit show Underground, I am obsessed with TV’s hottest new pairing, Rosalee (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) and Noah (Aldis Hodge), two enslaved Americans from the fictional Macon Plantation in Georgia who have escaped bondage and are currently on a North-bound run. They have the best relationship on TV, even if,…
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4 Things I Learned as a Man on a New Natural-Hair Journey
Late last year I wrote a piece (“The Nappyheaded Black Male Revolution Is On”) about changing my hair for the first time in over a decade, connecting my decision to get a fade and allow it to grow out to the creative hair decisions being made by black males (young and old) around the country.…
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15 Truly Underrated Hip-Hop Albums
Since I had to conceal the “Parental Advisory” sticker to convince my mama to purchase my very first compact disc—Bone Thugs-n-Harmony’s E. 1999 Eternal—from Blockbuster Music back in 1995, I’ve accumulated somewhere just south of 1,000 CDs. After 21 years of collecting so much music, I’ve forgotten about certain albums that were significant to me…
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On Saartjie Baartman and the Ownership of Black Women’s Bodies
The perceived ownership of a black woman’s body is an issue deeply woven into the fabric of the ugliest pieces of history. This poisonous thinking has not been quarantined to one section of the globe. In the United States, it was this idea of “ownership” that dominated the thinking of plantation owners and allowed them…
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Meet Tracy Oliver, Who Will Make You Laugh at Barbershop: The Next Cut
Barbershop: The Next Cut, starring Ice Cube and Cedric the Entertainer as barbers on the South Side of Chicago (the third installment of the franchise), is probably a lot funnier than most people expect, thanks in part to Tracy Oliver. The Stanford-educated, South Carolina native first got our attention as Nina, the work nemesis of…
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105 Real Black Women More Deserving of Book Deals Than Fake Black Woman Rachel Dolezal
On Wednesday, various news outlets confirmed what post-racial turducken Rachel Dolezal alluded to in her recent interview on the Today show. She did indeed receive a deal to pen a book about race. From The Guardian: Rachel Dolezal, the civil-rights activist who was accused of misrepresenting herself as black last year, has been signed to…