culture
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Don’t Waste Your Pretty on a Man Who Won’t Spend His Time on You
I dated a guy for five months. We had a talk and he said he wasn’t ready for a relationship yet. Things fell off after that. I saw him about a month after the conversation, and he mentioned that we should see each other more, at least once a week. Didn’t happen. I let him…
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Rick Famuyiwa: A Dope Director
With his debut film, 1999’s The Wood—set in his native Inglewood, Calif., in metro Los Angeles, about three childhood best friends, one on the brink of getting married—screenwriter-director Rick Famuyiwa added a refreshing twist to the hood genre largely defined by such films as 1991’s Boyz n the Hood and 1993’s Menace II Society. Several…
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Selling Your House? Don’t Cook Fried Chicken in It
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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Dear Rachel: Here’s What I Wrote After I Got Mad Watching Your Interview
It’s really not that “complicated,” #RachelDolezal. Because, no, you didn’t “go there with the experience”; no, you’re not a black hairdresser; no, you didn’t have to play black to be your black children’s mom; and no, this discussion about race and what it means to be black—while rich and important and long overdue—hasn’t occurred “at…
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Can a Commercial Solve Racism? These 7 Tried
A good commercial can make you laugh, cry, call your mom or even occasionally buy something you hadn’t intended. But a new ad by Pedigree dog food asks another question: Can a commercial make you get over racism? Pedigree recently launched an ad campaign that ostensibly is about walking your dog, but is actually promoting a…
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Let’s Not Question Blackness Because a White Woman Says So
I’ve spent much of the last few days crying real tears over black Twitter’s brilliant and hilarious responses to Rachel Dolezal’s shenanigans. Seriously, search #AskRachel and #RachelDolezal if you need a pick-me-up. Then the conversations turned serious. I saw how much pain she was causing sisters like me who have been demeaned for the very…
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This Father’s Day, Let’s Shatter the Myth About the Absent Black Father
Black men are present and engaged fathers who love their children. Black men are present and engaged fathers who love their children. I needed to write that twice, in hopes that it cuts through the racist and patently false narrative amplified by mainstream media that the majority of black fathers are scurrilous beings who are…
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How Michael Cole Went From a Jail Cell to Selling Ice Cream With Hip-Hop-Inspired Flavors
The East Village neighborhood in New York City is chock-full of small bars and nightclubs that are destinations for people from far and wide, so it’s never a surprise to see a crowd spilling onto the sidewalk. Yet, the crowd at Mikey Likes It isn’t there for alcoholic beverages or the scene. They’re there for ice…
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The Germans Used to Pour One Out for the Black St. Maurice With This Drinking Horn
This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black Archive & Library at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. The carefully rendered appearance of this magnificently crafted drinking horn comes from a hand-illustrated inventory of the vast collection of…