culture
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Mark Jackson Calls for Game 5 Boycott as Clippers Sponsors Continue to Flee
While everyone awaits NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s decision—expected sometime Tuesday—regarding the purported racist ramblings of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, Golden State Warriors coach Mark Jackson is calling for an L.A. boycott of Game 5 of the playoffs. In what would be L.A.’s first home game since the recordings were leaked to TMZ, Jackson…
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Brazilian Soccer Player Dani Alves’ Epic Response to Banana Thrown at Him
Brazilian soccer player Dani Alves shrugged off a racist jester with good humor while playing a game in Villarreal, Spain, on Sunday. According to CNN, Alves, who plays for Barcelona, good-naturedly picked up a banana that a Villarreal fan threw at him during the game and took a big bite of the fruit before continuing…
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Black Success Can’t Change Warped Views Like Donald Sterling’s
Revelations of the Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s reportedly racist comments about African Americans shine light on contemporary race relations, where, frequently, the truth is only said behind closed doors. Sterling’s alleged remarks, about a female friend “associating with black people” was spurred by pictures that she posted to her Instagram account, posing with…
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Donald Sterling vs. Systemic Racism: It’s OK, We Can Talk About Both
Editor’s note: We took Race Manners to Facebook today, where The Root’s senior staff writer, Jenée Desmond-Harris, engaged in a live Q&A with readers. They wanted to talk about—what else?—Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s recent racist rant, how we should make sense of it, and the players’ reaction to the news that their boss didn’t want…
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10 Jaw-Dropping Instances of Racism in Professional Sports
Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling and, by association, the NBA are having one hell of a week. TMZ released an audiotape of a man who sounds an awful lot like Sterling, expressing disgust over his girlfriend’s Instagram photos with black men. But this isn’t the first time that “sports” and “race” have collided in…
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Iconic Jazz Club Is Reborn in Harlem
When restaurateur and executive chef Alexander Smalls and his business partner Richard Parsons, former CEO of Time Warner and retired chairman of Citigroup, began scouting for spots in Harlem to fulfill their vision for fine dining and upscale entertainment about five years ago, they knew it would be an uphill battle. After settling on the…
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5 Weird Facts About the Donald Sterling Fiasco
While the media takes Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling to task for recorded racist rants attributed to him, among other things, here are a few things you may want to know about the fiasco. 1. Donald Sterling was born Donald Tokowitz. According to an article in The Nation, Sterling (né Tokowitz) was the only…
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Shaquille O’Neal and Others Mock Michigan Man With Rare Disorder
A Michigan man who suffers from a rare disorder didn’t think anything of the selfie he posted to his Instagram account until NBA great Shaquille O’Neal made fun of it. The oversized jokester posted a photo to his Instagram account mocking Jahmel Binion’s photo. Binion has ectodermal dysplasia, a condition characterized by a reduced ability…
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Cliven Bundy’s Black ‘Bodyguard’ and the Black-Friend Defense
We’ve all heard it so many times that it’s officially a cliché—everyone who says something that offends a particular group manages to conveniently claim that he has a “friend” in that group—and it’s supposed to be definitive proof that he can’t really be racist, sexist, homophobic or insert-whatever-phobic. The gold standard cliché among all of…
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Donald Trump Goes After ‘Very, Very Bad Girlfriend’ for ‘Baiting’ Donald Sterling
Conservative business giant Donald Trump appeared on Fox News to give his two cents about the Donald Sterling scandal. Although Trump did describe Sterling’s comments as “horrible” and “disgusting,” he also took up a new angle, calling girlfriend V. Stiviano—whose lawyer has denied that she released the audio of Sterling’s racist rant—the “girlfriend from hell.”…