culture
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Read Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s Acceptance Speech for the duPont Award
Editor’s note: The Root’s editor-in-chief, Henry Louis Gates Jr., was one of 14 recipients Tuesday night of an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for his six-part PBS documentary, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. Here’s his acceptance speech for the award: Thank you so very much, Cynthia McFadden, for that very kind introduction. I sat…
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Ernest J. Gaines: A Great American Author Pays It Forward to a New Generation of Black Writers
Ernest J. Gaines was born in 1933 to a family of sharecroppers at River Lake Plantation in Oscar, La. They lived in the workers quarters on a dirt road lined on both sides with two-room cabins built by their slave ancestors. There was no running water or inside toilet, no electricity. Five months of the…
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Poll: 50 Percent of Americans Say Race Relations Have Gotten Worse Since Obama Took Office
Nearly 50 percent of Americans say that race relations in the U.S. “have gotten worse” since President Barack Obama took office, and a mere 15 percent say that race relations have improved under Obama’s tenure, results from an Al-Jazeera and Monmouth University poll reveal. People’s opinions about the state of race relations differed along racial lines. “White…
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Black Cubans: Restoring US Ties Is Cool, but America, Keep Your Hang-Ups About Race at Bay
It doesn’t matter how much Cuba’s culture changes now that the U.S. has restored diplomatic relations; if you’re waiting for black Cubans to set off some sort of racial revolution, don’t hold your breath. That’s according to some black Cubans who shared their thoughts on race with The Root in the edited Q&A below. Omar Diaz is a 28-year-old…
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Brooklyn Man Who Was Choked During His Arrest Wins Lawsuit Against NYC
Kevin Dennis-Palmer, a 28-year-old father from Brooklyn, N.Y., settled a lawsuit against New York City for $75,000 for a 2013 incident that Dennis-Palmer alleges involved police brutality. He says that officers from the New York City Police Department used excessive force on him during a routine stop, including putting him in a choke hold, the…
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It’s Hard Out Here for a ‘Redbone’: What Light Girls Gets Wrong … and Right
Listening to light-skinned black women talk about colorism is, for some people, comparable to listening to white people talk about racism: like nails on a chalkboard, or Charlie Brown’s teacher. Unfortunately, some aspects of Light Girls—the problematic Bill Duke-produced documentary that premiered Monday night on OWN—probably did nothing to disabuse them of that notion. Without…
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Dove Hair Wants You to Embrace Your Curls
Dove Hair has launched a new campaign and film, hoping to encourage young girls of all backgrounds to embrace and love their curly hair. The campaign was brought on by a recently commissioned global study by the beauty company, which discovered that only 10 percent of women in the U.S. who have curls are proud…
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Vacuum Salesman Surprises Autistic Teen With Birthday Gift
Dylan Johnson of Chesterfield, Va., was never the type of kid to be amused by the average toy. Ever since he was 2, his mom says, he has just simply loved vacuum cleaners. So Dylan’s mother, Jodie Greene, got the novel idea of inviting a vacuum salesman from his favorite brand, Kirby, to give a…
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Roxbury Artist Shines in Google Doodle for MLK Day
Ekua Holmes is a painter and collagist who mixes brilliant and vibrant color sense with a keen observation of personal interactions and urban life. And today the Roxbury, Mass., artist is having a day like no other: She was selected to create the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Google Doodle, which greets millions of Web…
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The Very Human MLK Portrayed by David Oyelowo Is the King We Should All Remember
There was a moment, as I watched Selma, when I became transfixed. I was fully immersed in the commanding yet nuanced performance of David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. It wasn’t because the actor looked just like MLK—he doesn’t—or because he perfectly mimicked the cadences of King’s distinctive speaking style. He didn’t seem to attempt…