culture
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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…
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Issa Trap: How Killer Mike Became the NRA’s Token Negro
“All warfare is based on deception.” —Sun Tzu, The Art of War A few days ago, I received a phone call from Kyla Lacey, a friend and contributor to The Root. Kyla informed me that she had received a request to appear on Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News and asked if I thought it…
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Pacific Rim Uprising Is a Terrible Movie That’s Actually Good for Black People
Spoiler alert: There will be spoilers and a plot review in this write-up. The original Pacific Rim (2013) is one of my favorite movies of all time. Yes, as a sci-fi and fantasy fan, I realize that a live-action film about robots fighting giant lizards from another dimension sounds like something scribbled in the margins…
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An Incomplete List of Things Black People Should Avoid Doing so They Won’t Be Killed by Police
On Sunday, March 18, police in Sacramento, Calif., fired 20 shots at Stephon Clark, killing him. Clark was unarmed and in his own backyard, leading many to ask what black people must do to escape the indiscriminate killing of black people. A 2015 study by researchers at the University of California, Davis, showed that there…