culture
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K. Michelle’s New Album Is Basically The Shade Room: The Musical
K. Michelle’s latest album, Kimberly: The People I Used to Know, is more or less an hourlong, multigenre “Fuck you” to various folks who have pissed her off for varied reasons through the years. The frame of mind she entered or at least settled on for her fourth studio effort is laid bare in the…
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Snow Ain’t the Only Thing White During Christmas, so I Give You the Top 10 Blackest Holiday TV Shows and Movies
My son Quinn loves Christmas. Like—he loves it in a watch-How the Grinch Stole Christmas-on-the-Fourth of July kind of way. Every year he bombards me with endless Christmas movies and TV specials during the month of December, and that experience has taught me one thing: Snow and eggnog aren’t the only things white during the…
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Is He Playing With Your Emotions and Wasting Your Time?
Sometimes we want someone so badly, we overlook all the warning signs and red flags that should send us running in the opposite direction. Other times, we are already waist-deep in emotions and feelings before we realize that the dude has no intentions toward us, accepts no accountability for his actions and is really just…
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Raise Your Hand if You Smoke Weed!
While on vacation in California recently, I smoked weed in front of my mom for the first time. Scratch that. I didn’t smoke weed in front of her. What I actually did was whip out a joint and tell her I was going to smoke it in her bathroom, where she regularly smokes her cigarettes…
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Roy Moore vs. Doug Jones Has Nothing to Do With Little Girls; It’s About White Supremacy
When die-hard Republicans engage in the often fruitless exercise of soliciting black and other minority voters to buck the stranglehold of the Democratic voting bloc and join the constantly shrinking tent of the Grand Old Party, they always resort to the same tactics. They declare themselves “the party of Lincoln” and mention how they ended…
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Nominate the Leaders of Tomorrow for The Root’s Young Futurists
Who are the young, outspoken activists standing up for their communities and calling out injustice? Who are the young, creative artists and entertainers who will tell our stories and represent us in the worlds of music, film, television, books and theater? Who are the young, business-savvy entrepreneurs who are not just looking for a job…
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Taxicab Confessions: On Being Friendly When You Can’t Be Bothered
The new World Trade Center in all its grotesque, sanitized and bleached whiteness still makes me a bit sick. I remember the towers before the planes hit; I remember the smoke and grief that wafted into Brooklyn after they fell. So this new whale carcass filled with high-end stores and corny tourist attractions turns my…
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Fear of the State, Fear of My Home: To Be Black and Queer in America
“I was called a faggot before I was ever called a nigger.” I’ve heard this statement from LGBTQ people hundreds of times across social media platforms, drawing various reactions from both hetero and homosexual communities alike. For many of us, this statement, albeit true, often lacks the full context and explanation of how both offensive…
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On the Ground at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum Opening in Jackson
It is debatable whether the unexpected snow hitting the South, including Jackson, Miss., affected attendance at the grand opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and the Museum of Mississippi History more than Donald Trump’s appearance Saturday. Civil rights icon U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) were not the only ones…
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If You Think the #MeToo Movement Means You Can’t Hug a Woman Anymore, You’re a Simpleton Who Needs to Hug a Wet Electric Socket
I swear on the immaculate weave on Janet Jackson’s head that men are ridiculous, and if I weren’t sexually attracted to them, I’d join the calls to ban them permanently. Yes, I am a man, but like 2Chainz, I’m different, so don’t lump me in with these fools who continually give me the gender equivalent…