culture
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The Root’s Clapback Mailbag: A Teachable Moment
Welcome to the last Clapback Mailbag. We have thoroughly enjoyed sharing our reader correspondence with you, but since we will all most definitely be annihilated in a nuclear holocaust this weekend, let’s take these last few moments to do what makes us feel good: Being petty. From: Sarah S.To: Michael HarriotSubject: Shame on you! I…
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Tracing Your Roots: Where Did My Ancestor’s Freed Slaves Go?
A forebear emancipates his slaves in the 1840s, but “freedom” was a relative term in 1840s Kentucky. Dear Professor Gates: I’m trying to trace a family who was owned by my sixth great-grandfather the Rev. John Holland Owen. Their names were Christopher and Winney Owens and Winney’s children—Fanny, Edwin, Elijah, Andrew Jackson, Charles, America, Mary…
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Watch: Bullet Holes and Rosé: Exploiting Black Pain for Profit
Updated Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017, 2:52 p.m. EDT: Becca Brennan, the owner of Summerhill, plastered over the holes in the wall that caused a storm of controversy when she referred to them as “bullet holes” in a press release, according to Gothamist. The repairs happened late Tuesday night. At a town hall in July, Brennan…
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An Open Letter to White Statues From Black America
Dear Statues, We know there’s been a lot of back and forth about our people’s efforts to eliminate your people from the planet, and instead of having you hear it secondhand, we thought we’d pen this open letter so you could get it straight from the source. It’s not that we don’t trust the filter…
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Dayveon: A Visceral Peek Into the Lives of Black Boys in Rural America
Editor’s note: Disclaimer: Some spoilers. As the phrase “representation matters” seeps through our veins, there is a slight odor of hungry desperation in the air that stems from lack. Because we have become accustomed to not seeing ourselves on-screen, we stretch ourselves reaching for the scraps that befall us. As soon as I saw the…
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The Incomplete List of Things White People Are Mad About This Week
In The Root’s efforts to reduce the amount of required daily reading about the Caucasian clutching of pearls, we have decided to condense the collective woes of wypipo into this brief listing of the things melaninless America will be weeping about this week. This checklist can come in handy for a number of reasons: Use…
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The Toys R Us Bankruptcy Filing Is Probably Good News for Black Kids
I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys R Us kidThere’s a million toys at Toys R Us that I can play with From bikes to trains to video games,It’s the biggest toy store there is I don’t wanna grow up, ’cause if I didI couldn’t be a Toys R Us kid. There are few…
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For Those Considering Blaxit, I Present to You: New Zealand
Imagine, if you will, a land that measures 40 leagues from the Far Downs in the west to Brandywine Bridge in the east. And from the northern moors to the marshes in the deep south, ripe fruit is in abundance, pockets of forest and snowcapped mountains dot the periphery to the edge of the horizon,…
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A Reminder: Black Queer People Are Whole
The Emmys were this past Sunday, and they were nothing short of black star power. From a black actor winning for the first time in decades in the drama category to a black comedian winning in a comedy series directed and written by all black people, one could say that the event was the most…
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Jordan Peele is No. 1 on The Root 100, Our Annual List of the Most Influential African Americans
When we launched The Root 100 in 2009, it was the perfect time to celebrate black excellence. The arrival of the country’s first black president was an occasion to champion the achievements of today’s African-Americans heroes—achievements that could exist only in our ancestors’ wildest dreams. But this year, in a political and cultural climate that…