culture
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Devon Wade Must Be Remembered for Disrupting the Prison Pipeline, Not Merely for How He Died
I will never forget the first—and, unfortunately, what would be the only—time I had the pleasure of meeting Devon Tyrone Wade, the Columbia University Ph.D. student killed late Sunday night. He was charming, had a smile that lit the entire room and demanded attention in the most subtle ways. Through his social media posts, it…
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Girls and Gays: On the Tenuous Relationship Between Black Women and Queer Black Folk
This past weekend, I was winding down after a fairly long Thanksgiving weekend by engaging in one of my guilty pleasures: The Real Housewives of Atlanta. After a long day, I was ready for some petty, funny mess. What I was not ready for was being blindsided by a transphobic “read.” The read in question?…
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NFL Players Just Sold Kaepernick’s Protests for $100 Million. Are They Sellouts or Heroes?
A group of players in the National Football League accepted an offer from NFL owners for $100 million for social justice causes in exchange for … umm … we want to use a term that expresses the exact sentiment while still conveying a modicum of journalistic integrity. We think the most precise way to describe…
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In Praise of Sailor J: The Woke AF Beauty Vlogger We’ve Been Waiting For
Sailor J thinks she knows my life. My entire insecure, aggressively honest (or just aggressive), disorganized and easily distracted Aries life. She also does one hell of a bronzed cat eye. The increasingly popular YouTuber—more than 120,000 subscribers and rising—first hit my radar in October with “Getting a Man 101”— a hilarious yet poignant take…
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I Got My 1st-Ever Brazilian, and It Changed My Life
Welcome to The Root After Dark, where I get to talk about all the things Danielle Belton (our editor-in-chief), Genetta Adams (our managing editor) and Yesha Callahan (our deputy managing editor) won’t let me talk about during the day. This is going to be fun for me, and I hope it is fun and enjoyable…
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6 Things to Watch Now That Harry Put a Ring on Meghan Markle
Meghan Markle’s engagement is #BlackGirlMagic. Now, not everyone may feel that way, but I felt that way from the moment the news hit me via text at 5:25 a.m. Monday. Heck, I felt that way even before the engagement, back when Kensington Palace broke precedent and put out a statement on behalf of Prince Harry…
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Photographer Afshin Shahidi Gives the World ‘a Private View’ of Prince’s Life
Prince has had numerous photographers over the years, but there’s one who stuck out to the Purple One from the day they met: Afshin Shahidi. If his name is familiar, it’s because you know and adore his beautiful daughter, Yara Shahidi, who shines as Zoe on Black-ish and will continue to sprinkle her Black Girl…
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Turning the Tide: Nonprofit Helps Black Female Entrepreneurs Compete With White Men
Social entrepreneur Alfa Demmellash may be a married mother of two, but she knows the plight of single mothers intimately. Raised in part by a single mother in her native Ethiopia at the height of the devastating Derg regime, Demmellash—who escaped violence that killed family members when she immigrated to the United States at age…
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The Root’s Clapback Mailbag: White Friday
In the wake of the Thanksgiving holiday, we would like to offer a kinder, gentler Clapback Mailbag this week. Instead of clapping back at the people who send emails, tweets and direct messages, we would like to thank our haters, because without them, where would we be? As you sit back munching on your leftover…
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Tracing Your Roots: How Do I Research My Cuban Origins?
Inspired by a shocking revelation on Professor Henry Louis Gates’ show, a woman wonders how to research her own heritage. Dear Professor Gates: My family is from Cuba. I have always had a desire to verify the oral histories from both sides of my family about our heritage. The episode of your PBS television show…