culture
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Morris Chestnut on Playing a Doctor in His New Series, Rosewood
In the pilot episode of Rosewood, which premieres Wednesday on Fox, Dr. Beaumont Rosewood Jr., a Miami-based private pathologist (in other words, a medical examiner who is not on the municipal payroll), comes upon a crime scene and deduces the cause of death and the scenario leading to it in a matter of minutes. And…
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Empire’s Back and So Is Jussie Smollett
Empire is going to be crazier this season. That’s what one of the Fox show’s stars, Jussie Smollett, promises. That Empire will be much crazier than last season is a feat that sounds impossible, but Smollett swears the writers, actors and producers embraced the craziness challenge and kicked the drama up beyond a few notches, going…
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TV Review: Black-ish Has Some Hilarious Things to Say About the N-Word
Promising an edgier sophomore season, Black-ish kicks off season 2 with the highly anticipated “n-word episode.” Whether or not it sparks a national conversation about the historically divisive issue remains to be seen, but it certainly delivers on the laughs. During a school talent show, Jack (Miles Brown)—aka “Party Time,” the youngest of the Johnson boys—performs Kanye West’s “Gold Digger,” and…
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Should You Talk About Money Problems in the Bedroom? Ask Our Experts
Harriette Cole is the author of the book of meditations 108 Stitches: Words We Live By and a contributing editor at The Root. Follow her on Twitter.
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Why I Dislike Facebook’s New Dislike Button
Has a news story ever made you extremely happy, at first, and then extremely salty by the time you finished reading it? Like putting a spoonful of lime sherbet in your mouth, only to realize it’s actually wasabi? I’m asking to make sure I’m not alone, because that happened to me twice last week. First…
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The Sisterhood of Hollywood Was on Full Display Emmy Night
Confession: I missed the Emmy Awards Sunday night. I was driving back to New York for work on Monday. It means I missed Viola Davis become the first black woman to win an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. It means I missed Taraji P. Henson going HAM in the audience and…
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A Muslim Daughter and Her Christian Mother Struggle to Find Peace
It is said that the two things we should never discuss at family gatherings are politics and religion; otherwise, passionate, terrible disagreements will occur—perhaps even estrangements that will last months, if not years. When Alana Raybon converted from the Christianity of her upbringing to Islam, silence was the route she and her still-Christian mother, Patricia…
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Get Ready for a Supersized Season of Empire
Cookie, Lucious and the Lyon sons are back Wednesday when Empire returns to Fox for a second season. The show, which is so big everyone is trying to claim credit for it, kept making ratings history week after week last season, including the finale, which set a record with 16.7 million total viewers. No wonder…
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Nancy Lee Grahn Pulls an #AllLivesMatter in Wake of Viola Davis’ Historic Emmy Win
Miscellaneous-daytime-drama actress Nancy Lee Grahn wants the world to know that the Emmys are no place to discuss the marginalization of black actresses in Hollywood, because all women are discriminated against, and “dramatic” race talk distracts from the bigger picture. As previously reported by The Root, Grahn made these ridiculously racist statements on Twitter in…
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Nancy Lee Grahn’s White Tears, Explained
So, I’ve heard this term “white tears” used before. What exactly does it mean? As I’ve written before, “white tears” is a phrase to describe what happens when certain types of white people either complain about a nonexistent racial injustice or are upset by a nonwhite person’s success at the supposed expense of a white person.…