culture
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From Most Hated to American Hero: The Whitewashing of Martin Luther King Jr.
There is a recipe for making a hero. Greatness is neither the singular nor most necessary ingredient. Fame is important because no matter how benevolent or worthy someone’s actions may be, people must know about them. And though it might seem antithetical, hate is a crucial factor. Abraham Lincoln was disliked by many Americans when…
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Don Lemon Helped Me Come Out to My Mother and It Changed My Life Forever
Love for a black gay man is a scary endeavor, even radical, in a country where racism isn’t such a throwback, its reverberations leaving only harmful residue in communities of color. And when you consider the pervasive homophobia in a heteronormative and patriarchal society, living in your truth as both African American and queer almost…
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Ready Player One and the Unbearable Whiteness of ’80s Nostalgia
Steven Spielberg is the stunt king of Hollywood; he might be the only American director who could create Ready Player One, a film that is literally an homage to Spielberg’s own work in the 1980s. Ready Player One is all about the adventure of a working-class Midwestern white teen boy who saves the world, the…
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Comfortably Numb: Stephon Clark, Alton Sterling and the Value of Being Punched in the Face
I was 9 years old the first time I was punched in the face. During a church service, I absconded from the sanctuary with two of my older cousins and headed to a neighborhood store. When I returned, my mother asked where I had been and I snitched: “I went to the store with Bernard…
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Tracing Your Roots: My Ancestor Was in Her Half Sister’s Dowry
Families intertwine and seemingly pass back and forth over the color line, complicating efforts to trace their origins. Dear Professor Gates: I would like to know more about my great-great-great-grandmother Melinda Day (1824-1890), who was born into slavery and became part of the dowry of her half sister Susannah Whittington from Georgia. One of Melinda’s…
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The Future of Child Care: How to Create a Fairer, More Equitable System for Working Women and Women of Color
For Women’s History Month, Jezebel and The Root are partnering for JezeRoot, a series that focuses on women of color, domestic workers and sex workers. When she was getting ready to have kids, Erika Washington was not without advice. People cautioned her about the cost of the diapers. They gave her advice on pregnancy and…
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Rikers Doesn’t Put Teens in Solitary; Other New York Jails Do
This article was published in partnership with Caught, the new podcast on juvenile justice from WNYC Studios and the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal-justice system. Sign up for its newsletter or follow the Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter. When the police approached Imani and her friends outside a Syracuse,…
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The Visitor’s Guide to Cookouts in Wakanda
Hello, and welcome to Wakanda! After noticing an increase in tourist visa applications and bookings at the newly renovated Downtown M’Arriott Garden Inn, the staff at the Wakanda Bureau of Tourism would like to offer some advice to first-time visitors to our great empire. Our temperate climate and the success of the documentary Black Panther…
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How to Stop Locking Up Kids
Editor’s note: This is the first of two essays The Root is publishing in partnership with Caught, a new podcast from WNYC Studios about the juvenile-justice system. We hope to generate a conversation about how we can support rather than merely punish young people who are in crisis, and we want to hear from you…