culture
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New Study Seeks to ‘Unlock Opportunity for African-American Girls’
A new report from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the National Women’s Law Center seeks to explain the reasons behind the often depressing statistics that black girls and women face. It’s a response to President Barack Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative, the $200 million program for boys of color that received heavy…
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Man Accused of Beheading Co-Worker Is Charged With Murder; May Face Death Penalty
Charges were filed against Oklahoma beheading suspect Alton Nolen on Tuesday, the Smoking Gun reports. The 30-year-old man, who was recently fired from his job at a food plant in Moore, Okla., was charged with murder and assault after he allegedly attacked two female co-workers with a knife, resulting in one being beheaded, on Sept.…
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Can Crowdfunding Finance Your Dream?
Bill Duke, director of the highly acclaimed documentary Dark Girls, joins The Root Live: Bring It to the Table on Wednesday, Oct. 1, to talk about his experience with crowdfunding. The Root Live, sponsored by Prudential, is a weekly video series tackling financial concerns in the African-American community. Duke is joined in the discussion by Denmark…
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NYPD Cop Charged in Drunken Assault of Woman After Breaking Into Her Home
A New York City police officer pleaded innocent on Monday to charges that he beat up a woman after breaking into her apartment while wearing only underwear, New York’s Daily News reports. Officer Eugene Donnelly was arraigned in Bronx Supreme Court for the June 10 incident. Donnelly—who, mere hours before the alleged incident, was awarded…
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Thug Kitchen: A Recipe in Blackface
When I first clicked through the recipes at Thug Kitchen, a tongue-in-cheek, vegan cooking blog served up with a heaping side of expletives, I imagined a calorie-conscious, gangly young black man who’s particularly vehement about clean eating, insistently tapping recipes into his blog while Dead Prez reverberates in the background. He has a good eye,…
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Armed Intruder Made It Deep Inside the White House: Report
Turns out that the man who jumped a White House fence armed with a knife and hatchet, and who was initially reported to have made it to the front door, actually made it as far as the White House’s East Room. According to NBC News, on Sept. 19 Omar J. Gonzalez hopped a fence, sprinted…
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More Cops Required to Wear Body Cameras
People who have been fed up the past several months with the string of incidents in which police officers have used excessive force against unarmed black men and women will be relieved to hear that at least a dozen police departments across the nation are beginning to equip their officers with video cameras, the New York Times reports. That’s right.…
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More Africans Immigrated to the US in the 2000s Than Came by Slave Ship
It’s sort of a weird benchmark to use to illustrate just how many sub-Saharan black Africans have immigrated to the United States over the past several years, but it’s impactful: According to a New York Times report, more black Africans moved to the U.S. between 2000 and 2010 than were brought to the North American continent by slave ship during…
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We Need to Focus on Strategies for Building Generational Wealth
During a recent Monopoly night with my husband, I was ahead, with lots of cash and some properties. But a few bad rolls of the die later, I found myself mortgaging my properties. I lost more equity at every turn despite the $200 in play money I had amassed. And then, to make matters worse,…
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13-Year-Old Boy Shot Dead in Chicago
Another Chicago mom is left heartbroken after her 13-year-old son was found dead some four blocks from his home at Marquette Park, where he often chilled with friends, the Chicago Tribune reports. “Why? Why would they do this? It’s senseless,” Demureye Macon’s mother, Tawana Macon, said, according to the Tribune. “Quit doing this to these…