culture
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Black Churches Have Always Been Targets of Domestic Terrorists
In the late 1790s, Richard Allen and former enslaved people in Philadelphia were tired of praying in the upper regions of St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church and came down to the altar. When they were summarily removed from their prayerful positions, they came together to birth the African Methodist Episcopal Church—the nation’s first of its…
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Slain SC Pastor Was ‘All-Around Good Guy’
He served the people, both in the church and as a state senator, and he was tragically killed in his own church during a shooting Wednesday that also took the lives of six women and two other men. He was South Carolina pastor and state Sen. Clementa C. Pinckney, one of the victims of a…
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This Season’s Top 5 Sweat-Approved Beauty Products
If you’re the type to skip makeup when you’re getting your heart rate up, then I want to tell you that you should consider wearing a little something-something next time you work out. Don’t worry—fitness-club and nightclub makeup aren’t the same. So why should you wear makeup while you sweat? Because fitness clubs are the…
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Movie Review: Dope Is Actually Pretty Dope
First, let’s get this out of the way. Dope is a good movie. It is enjoyable, watchable and sweet. But it is also so sweet that if it were a drink, it would be a hipster, artisan rum punch drowning in simple syrup. And it ties up so neatly—despite all of its early wit and…
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Strategies to Ease Your Debt Burden
Do you sometimes feel that debt is a hammer and you’re the nail? The median black household had less than half the debt of white households — $35,000 compared to $75,000, according to a 2013 U.S. Census report. Yet, black households carry significantly more debt relative to their household assets than white households. The…
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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…