culture
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Georgia Teen Killed and 2 Injured in Hit-and-Run
A 15-year-old Georgia teen was fatally injured and two other teens were hospitalized after two men involved in a high-speed chase hit the three teens as they were walking to see a movie. According to WSB-TV, the girls have been identified as Reina As-Salaam, 15, and Juliana Ferrell and Monica Epps, both 16. Reina died…
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Report: Miss. Judge Smacks Mentally Disabled Black Man, Tells Him ‘Run, N–ger, Run’
A white Mississippi Justice Court judge is accused of slapping a 20-year-old mentally disabled African-American man and yelling, “Run, n—ger, run,” after he fled. “This is 2014,” said former Canton Mayor William Truly, president of the Canton branch of the NAACP, “not 1960, where someone could slap a young man and call out, ‘Run, n—ger,…
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Brothers’ Fight Over Clothes Leads to Murder-Suicide
A fight between two brothers over sharing clothes turned deadly after Steven Odeus shot and killed his older brother Stanley Blanc and then took his own life. “Started off as a small petty argument over clothes that escalated into a fight,” Marc Blanc, a third brother told CBS4 News. “Right before my eyes my brother…
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Nigerian Official: Kidnapped Girls Located but Not Rescued
Nigerian officials believe that they have located the more than 200 schoolgirls kidnapped last month by an Islamist militant group but are hesitant to implement a forceful rescue due to worries that doing so may endanger them, CNN reports. “We want our girls back. I can tell you that our military can and will do…
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‘Unpopular Black Opinion’ Confessions
There are unpopular opinions, and then there are unpopular black opinions. Have you ever been talking to your friends and let one slip? Maybe you’ve come out as anti-Scandal or, worse, turned the station when a Beyoncé song came on. The backlash that can come from speaking your truth is enough to make you worry…
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The Root’s Summer Reading List
Who says summer reading has to be fluff? There are so many recent titles and reprinted standouts tackling the black experience—in poetry, biography and works of fiction—that even the most voracious readers can barely keep up. Pack one of these to turn a trip to the pool into an inspiring escape, and get your sun…
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A More Diverse Medical Profession Means Better Care for a Diverse America
If there was any doubt left that the Obama era didn’t usher in a postracial society, it was erased in the last few weeks by the spectacle that was the Donald Sterling affair. It probably doesn’t surprise anyone at this point that we have not yet reached the promised land of equality and racial blindness…
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Miles Davis Way Unveiled in New York City
On May 26, the day that would have been his 88th birthday, the iconic trumpeter Miles Davis was honored in New York City with the unveiling of a street, Miles Davis Way, on the West 77th Street block where he lived in Manhattan from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s. “The contribution he made to…
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Environmental Justice Requires MLK’s Fierce Urgency of Now
More than 50 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about race in America and invoked the imagery of this nation’s natural beauty to inspire and encourage collective action and to implore our sense of justice to “roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Five years later, in 1968, just hours…
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Can We Please Get Some Black Gay Male Couples on TV?
My television raised me. I’m not criticizing my mom here. A single mother, she worked tirelessly to give her only son whatever he wanted and needed, and that meant she was busy. Often, the TV stood in for both of my parents. I began to look to it for anything I needed to know about…