culture
-
Marrying Young: Why the Worst Dating Advice in the World Actually Worked (for Me)
Chances are, if you were a normal college student, you were a terrible person to date. Who really knows anything about being a quality partner at 18, 19 or even 20, 21 years old? Most of us at that age were just trying to find ourselves (or find ourselves in someone else’s pants). Now that…
-
Yoga Is for Everybody—and Every Body
Next up in The Root’s minority-health video series during National Minority Health Month is yoga. Yoga is not just about stretching. Beyond the intricate poses often associated with hatha yoga, the practice is about watching the breath, aligning the spine and clearing the mind. In 2003 Shelley Nicole learned that she had a hiatal hernia, which…
-
If You’re Trying to Control Your Man Like He’s a Kid, He Might as Well Go Live With His Mama
Dear Demetria: I live with my boyfriend and I have a car that he drives. He mostly uses it to go to the store and such. No problem. This weekend, I asked him to go to the market with me. He didn’t want to go. I went with my girls and spent, like, four hours…
-
Group Dinners Are Awful. Stop Having Them
Getting older seems to come with a fair amount of side effects—increased joint pain, indigestion, tooth sensitivity, general peevishness about being awake after 11 on a weeknight. Some of these are just general consequences of your body letting you know that you, too, are slowly decaying from years of treating your body like Play-Doh with…
-
Love, Duty and Politics: Ta-Nehisi Coates Takes on Marvel’s Black Panther
Last week the first issue of Marvel’s new Black Panther comic broke sales records and sold 300,000 issues in the first printing. Meaning that a comic book about a black superhero sold more copies than the daily circulation of the Baltimore Sun, Washington Times or Boston Globe. Why? It probably has a lot to do…
-
5 Black Alternative Candidates Black America Should Consider for President
As Barack Obama’s second presidential term winds to a close, black Americans are contemplating the sad prospect of holding their noses when they cast their votes for the next commander in chief. Instead of choosing the lesser of the remaining evils, here are five choices you should consider for the next black president of the…
-
When R. Kelly Is Your ‘Brother,’ You Make Statements Like This
Erykah Badu, a musical genius who is one of my favorite artists, ignited a Twitter storm Monday night with her controversial statements on rape culture and sexuality, tweeting that she agreed with an article in which a school required girls to wear longer skirts so as not to serve as “distractions” for heterosexual male teachers.…
-
Larenz Tate Talks Up His New TV Show and What It Would Take to Do a Love Jones Sequel
Whenever Larenz Tate is mentioned, it’s hard not to think of Menace II Society, Love Jones, Dead Presidents and The Inkwell. Throughout the 1990s he was a constant big-screen presence. In the 2000s he’s been a presence as well, just a slightly less brash one. On cable he most notably held his own in FX’s…
-
The Paradox of Being a Black, Christian, Social Justice Advocate
I’m a black woman who loves hip-hop. And I don’t mean that in an “I have a gym playlist that includes a little Hov” kind of way. I mean it in the “At least once a day I use rap lyrics or their song titles to express myself” kind of way. Like when Hillary Clinton…
-
The 72-10 Chicago Bulls: Where Are They Now?
The 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, greatly enhanced by Michael Jordan’s return after a two-year hiatus, won an NBA record 72 games en route to three consecutive titles. The Golden State Warriors, led by the incomparable Steph Curry, have tied Chicago’s mark and can break it Wednesday night against the Memphis Grizzles in the regular-season finale. There…