culture
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Street Harassment Is a Problem—No Doubt—but Here’s Why That Video Didn’t Help the Debate
If the instantly notorious street-harassment video was intended to make men more sympathetic to the horrors women deal with on a daily basis, it didn’t succeed. Called simply, “10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman,” the video has now been viewed more than 15 million times on its original YouTube page, but it…
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Judge Offers Stunning Reversal of Sentence After Man Recants Double-Murder Confession
A prisoner who was instrumental in a case that led to the abolishment of the death penalty in Illinois was released Thursday after recanting his confession in that case. According to the Associated Press, Alstory Simon’s confession to murder led to the release of Anthony Porter in 1999. Porter, who spent 16 years on death row…
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Carmen de Lavallade Still Captivates Onstage at 83
Carmen de Lavallade calls herself a woman of her time. During her one-woman stage show, As I Remember It, the 83-year-old star dancer of stage and screen recounts growing up during the Great Depression and being raised by her father after her mother died in a sanatorium. She remembers listening to programs on the radio and…
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Charges Refiled Against Homeless Ariz. Woman Who Left Kids in the Car While on Job Interview
The homeless Arizona woman who was arrested after she left her two children in the car while she went to a job interview has had charges against her reinstated after authorities say she failed to follow court guidelines conditional to her release. Shanesha Taylor found herself at the center of a national debate surrounding child…
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Halloween ‘Lynching’ Scene Taken Down After Neighbors Complain
Offensive Halloween costumes and displays have begun to rear their ugly heads. A Halloween display depicting a black family hanging from a tree has been removed by military officials from a home located at Fort Campbell, Ky. According to Raw Story, the person responsible for the display agreed to take it down and said that…
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Illinois Substitute Teacher Calls Students the N-Word
Illinois eighth-graders Mea Thompson, Zaria Daniel and two other students were working in a classroom group earlier this week when, they say, a substitute teacher referred to them as “African American.” “All four of us that were sitting there got offended because none of us are from Africa,” Mea told NBC Chicago. “I’m Jamaican. So…
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There’s History Behind Those Halloween Blackface Fails
With Halloween approaching, we’ll soon see a rash of stories about young white college students who feel compelled to apologize for an unfortunate Instagram photo that depicts them in blackface at a campus party. The kind of real-life incidents that inspired the new film Dear White People. Yet despite the ambivalence, awkwardness and, sometimes, revulsion…
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Ta-Nehisi Coates on White Supremacy and a Life of Struggle
This year we selected writer Ta-Nehisi Coates as the top honoree on The Root 100, our annual list of influential and high-achieving African Americans. It was June when The Atlantic published his widely read and highly acclaimed cover article, “The Case for Reparations,” which “lays bare a compelling argument for the pecuniary redress of Africans brought…
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High School Football Player Has Leg Amputated After Game Injury
On Friday Leshawn Williams, a defensive lineman for Northeast High School in Florida, took a nasty spill, and at first everyone believed it affected his knee. He would most likely miss the rest of the season. The game was delayed for almost 30 minutes as team medics tried to figure out if there was just…
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Painted Down: Exposing Hollywood’s Dirty Little Secret of Putting White Stunt Doubles in Blackface
Outside the world of film and TV, few had probably ever heard the term “painting down” until earlier this month, when Warner Bros. Television apologized for wanting to use a white stuntwoman in dark-skinned makeup in its Fox TV show Gotham. The embarrassed production company said it would hire an African-American stuntwoman instead. Yet any…