culture
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We Get It. It’s Harvey Weinstein’s News Cycle. But What About Our Black Girls?
I stopped watching broadcast news five years ago, after a sex crime was reported in close proximity to where I live. The local news was beginning to feel like trauma porn and was much too close to home. The purge had been a healthy choice—that is, until national news infiltrated my timeline, the Twitterverse and…
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Thor: Ragnarok: This Time the Magical Negroes Have Swords
At this point in America, there are two types of people: those who enjoy the nearly decadelong series of Marvel Avengers movies … and deplorables. That’s about it. If you don’t like these movies by now, you’re probably a deplorable who hates everything coming out of Hollywood or you just hate superhero movies because you…
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The Unsinkable Nikki Giovanni Reflects on a Life of Tears and Laughter in New Collection
You don’t have to wonder where Nikki Giovanni is on a Saturday night. The iconic poet, who just released her latest collection of poems last week, is a devout Saturday Night Live fan and is especially impressed by Alec Baldwin and his Donald Trump impersonations. “He has Trump nailed as the fool that he is,”…
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Facebook Ran Russian Ads on The Root’s Page, but It Didn’t Work. Here’s What They Should’ve Tried
News outlets have reported that Russian operatives, in an apparent attempt to sway voters toward Donald Trump, bought social media ads targeted toward certain groups of people. This week, Facebook revealed to our parent company, Fusion Media, that Russia-related content ran on two of our sites: Splinter (formerly Fusion) and here at The Root. Even…
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B.o.B.’s Apparent Belief That Slave Ships Never Existed May Be the Most Hotep Conspiracy Theory of All Time
Flat-earther B.o.B constantly proves my belief that a person can be a genius in one field and totally clueless in another. We previously reported that the talented rapper and singer was raising funds to build a satellite that will once and for all settle the debate about whether or not the planet is dinner-plate shaped.…
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Kevin Spacey and the Damage Done
By now, we’ve all heard about Anthony Rapp’s allegations of sexual assault by Kevin Spacey when Rapp was 14 and Spacey was 26. Waking up in the middle of the night to the revelation of Rapp’s story and Spacey’s response felt like a punch in the gut because it doesn’t just happen in Hollywood. As…
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When Should Rappers Hang Up the Microphone?
When I was perusing the list of new-release albums from this past Oct. 13, it dawned on me after some time that three of the artists—Wu-Tang, Camp Lo and Krayzie Bone (with his group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony)—all released albums that I absolutely loved exactly 20 years ago. In 1997 I turned 16, obtained my driver’s license…
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The Culture of Male Silence: Men Treat Sexual Assault Like America Treats White Supremacy
I am not a religious man by any measure, but there are universal truths to which I adhere. I believe that love is a byproduct of love. I believe that hate made love to an orange, had a petty-ass baby, and that’s how we got the grapefruit. I believe that cats were put on earth…
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Betsy DeVos, Our Educational System Helps Produce Harvey Weinsteins and We Need to Change That
Editor’s note: Once a month, the National Interest column will tackle broader questions about what the country should do to increase educational opportunities for black youths. The New York Times’ explosive revelations of Harvey Weinstein’s three-decades-long career of sexual assault laid bare the prevalence of rape culture in our society. Sexism is a national problem…
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What Pitbull Gets Wrong When He Says ‘Immigrants Built the United States of America’
It’s one thing to underscore the vast contributions immigrants have made to the United States of America. It’s another to completely erase the egregious history of slavery while benefiting from it. Rapper Pitbull demonstrated such a faux pas last week at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. It was there that Telemundo held its 2017…