culture
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Black Theater Success Is Reshaping One of America’s Whitest Fields
The theater world has long been considered one of the most elite—and least diverse—in American culture. And as I’ve previously covered for The Root, at present there are only a handful of African-American Broadway producers, despite the fact that 46 new shows opened last season. Over the years, though, there have been occasional African-American playwriting…
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Digital Soul: The Computer, Imagination and Social Change
Science fiction authors and philosophers have asked: Could a computer have a soul? I have a different question: Could a computer produce soul (if you dig what I mean)? The computer is an instrument, just like a piano and a human voice. So just as Nina Simone used those instruments in her song “Mississippi Goddam,” the computer…
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Chicago Police Search for Mom After 'Precious Baby Girl’ Found Abandoned
Chicago police are searching for the mother of a baby found abandoned in the lobby of a South Side apartment building, NBC Chicago reports. Thomas Freeman told police he found the child wrapped in a purple blanket about 11:30 p.m. Friday at the building in the 8200 block of South Justine Street. The child was…
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Michelle Obama Emphasizes Freedom of Speech in Visit to China
Freedom of speech and unrestricted access to information make countries stronger, Michelle Obama told students in China, the Associated Press reports. China has some of the world’s tightest restrictions on the Internet. The first lady spoke Saturday at Peking University in Beijing during a weeklong visit designed to advance educational exchanges between the United States…
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Study: Violent Video Games with Black Characters Fuel Racism
You start your favorite video game, go to character select, pick a black avatar—be it a fighter or gangster—and start playing. As a white person, what effect, if any, does this have on you? According to a new study, the effect is significant: White players who adopt black characters are more likely to exhibit aggression…
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Africans Are Helping Themselves—Fuel Their Innovation, Not Your Own
It has been a recurring experience during my trips to Ghana and Nigeria in the past few years: seeing Africans do far more for themselves than the mainstream narrative about Africa would have you believe. More important, the methods used by local merchants—and even laymen who have to be ready at a moment’s notice to…
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Virginia KKK Leader: ‘We Don’t Hate People Because of Their Race’
The head of a Virginia Ku Klux Klan group says the organization has been unfairly depicted as racist, arguing that it is simply a nonviolent, Christian organization. Frank Ancona, imperial wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, made the comment during an interview Thursday with NBC 12 in response to complaints…
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Teen Whose Dad Died Shielding Her: ‘I Am Going to Make Him Proud’
“I am going to make him proud,” Masharah Tingling told the Chicago Tribune after her father, Michael Tingling, died Wednesday protecting her from an ex-convict during a sidewalk confrontation on the city’s North Side. Her father was looking forward to the eighth-grader’s graduation this spring from Chicago Math and Science Academy, said a friend, Carmen Preister. Preister…
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University of Alabama Student Leaders Block Greek Integration Bill
Six months after the campus newspaper reported on apparent racial discrimination in the University of Alabama pledging system, the student government on Thursday failed to pass a bill to support full integration of the school’s system of Greek fraternities and sororities, according to AL.com. The Senate of the Student Government Association (SGA) sent the measure…
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Don Lemon Won’t Rule Out the Supernatural in Malaysia Airliner Mystery
While governments, inspectors and even President Obama are ramping up efforts to find out exactly what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, CNN host Don Lemon isn’t ready to take supernatural and biblical theories off the table. On Sunday, Lemon said: “Especially today, on a day when we deal with the supernatural, we go to…