culture
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No More Fear: It’s Time to Reform Policing in Baltimore
On the evening of April 31, 2012, someone broke into Ashley Overbey’s home in Northeast Baltimore. When Overbey returned from work and noticed her home was awry, she called the police. The responding officers were rude, according to Overbey. They told her, “You live in Baltimore; what do you expect?” She called to file a…
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A List of People Not Responsible for Damaging the Legacy of Bill Cosby and The Cosby Show
Yesterday Ebony magazine debuted the cover of its November issue. It features a picture of the Huxtables from The Cosby Show behind shattered glass, with the glass’s most prominent crack directly over Bill Cosby’s face. Naturally, this explosive cover sparked another round of conversation about “the Cosby legacy”—something The Root’s Senior Writer Kirsten West Savali examined in a…
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Scandal Recap: Dog-Whistle Politics
Last week, after telling the world that she is President Fitzgerald Grant III’s mistress, Olivia Pope gave White House Press Secretary Abby Whelan permission to throw her under the bus in front of the press in order to take the heat off Fitz. This week the media had a field day with this story as…
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How to Get Away With Murder Recap: Trying to Fix Bad Karma
It’s been about a month since anyone in Annalise Keating’s close circle killed anyone (that we know of), and now they seem to be focused on becoming better people—or maybe just not adding any more bad luck to their already damaged karma. Connor Betrays Annalise Connor, who chopped up Sam’s body and once figuratively pushed…
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About That Ebony Cosby Cover Everyone’s Talking About
You could almost hear the glass shatter when Ebony magazine’s November “Family Issue(s)” cover exploded across social media Thursday, shards of conflicting emotions piercing the soul of black America. Front and center is the Huxtable family, minus Sandra, frozen as many of us remember them: happy, beautiful and black. The smiling face of patriarch Cliff Huxtable is distorted…
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Where’s the Media Sympathy for Lamar Odom?
Of course you’ve heard that two-time NBA champion Lamar Odom was found unresponsive in Las Vegas on Tuesday. He was taken to a local hospital, where he remains in critical condition. This has caused a major media frenzy, a circus. I guess it’s to be expected because Odom is a celebrity. He became a familiar…
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Review: The Game’s The Documentary 2 Is the Album I Wish Kendrick Lamar Had Released
If you’re a hip-hop fan, then you are as familiar with the trajectory of the Game as any other artist out there. Game hit the scene in 2005 with his debut album, The Documentary, which is easy to call a classic for its incredible beats and top-shelf lyricism and the effect of the 50 Cent/G-Unit juggernaut…
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Empire Recap: Into the Woods
Jamal can’t give an interview in peace. Cookie burst into the last one to rant and rave; now he’s pulled away from an interview for a Rolling Stone cover story. FBI agents have raided the Empire headquarters and ransacked Lucious’ office. At the little Lyon Dynasty studio, Hakeem is determined to rebuild a girl group…
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Lamar Odom’s Suspected Overdose Is Not an Episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians
Basketball fans around the world are anxiously awaiting more information about the condition of beloved former Los Angeles Laker Lamar Odom, who reportedly overdosed Tuesday afternoon at Love Ranch, a legal brothel in Nevada. But all mainstream media seem to be concerned with, when not busy making the story as tawdry and sensationalistic as possible, are…
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A Mother’s Nurturing Love Shines Brightly in Ordinary Light
She left us at night,” writes Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith in the opening of her new memoir, Ordinary Light, which was just nominated for the National Book Award in nonfiction. “She’d been lifting her hand to signal for relief, a code we’d concocted once it became too much effort for her to speak and…