culture
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Delayed Honor: Congressional Gold Medal for '4 Little Girls'
Addie Mae Collins, 14; Denise McNair, 11; Carole Robertson, 14; and Cynthia Wesley, 14 — known to many as the “four little girls” — were killed on the morning of Sunday, Sept. 15, 1963, in the bombing of an African-American church. It was an act that that drew national attention to Birmingham, Ala.’s racism crisis.…
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Muslims Beyond Caricatures
(The Root) — Muslim-American commentators saturated the airwaves and social-media forums this past week, breaking down how the Boston explosions will affect Islam and its American following. Heads of organizations, political pundits and lay citizens voiced their viewpoints on every channel of the American-media gamut after the two suspected culprits, Dhzokar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were…
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Watch: 'Rent Is Too Damn High' Rap Video
The man who popularized the phrase “The rent is too damn high” during his 2010 campaign for New York governor has officially tapped into his inner emcee, the Daily Beast reports. Jimmy McMillan’s anthem on housing costs — whose title is also the name of his political party — has been memorialized in rap form.…
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Inmates 'Control' Baltimore Jail; Get Officers Pregnant
The Washington Post is reporting that, according to an indictment filed this week, 13 female corrections officers essentially handed over control of a Baltimore jail to gang leaders. The head of the Maryland agency that oversees the Baltimore City Detention Center has taken full responsibility for the situation. It’s one that, according to the charges,…
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Quote of the Day: T. Thomas Fortune
Read the entire quote here. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University. He is also the editor-in-chief of The Root. Follow him on Twitter. Like The Root on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.
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Obama on Tattoos: If the Girls Get One, I Get One
We got a chuckle out of this Today show example of President Obama’s exercise of leadership and negotiation skills in a (very) domestic context. “Domestic” as in his own home, dealing with everyday parenting issues with his young daughters. Note to Sasha and Malia: Get the ink. We would die to see this clip. (The…
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Lauryn Hill: Million-Dollar Sony Deal to Avoid Prison?
Lauryn Hill, who pleaded guilty last year to failing to pay federal taxes on $1.8 million earned between 2005 and 2007, revealed in a Monday hearing before a federal judge that she has signed a $1 million deal with Sony under which she’ll record five new songs, according to a Billboard report. Sounds like good…
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Who Do We Have to Shame to Get a Gun Law Passed?
At Essence, Daniella Gibbs Léger explains her rage over the failure of background check legislation — and who she says is to blame. Before the events unfolded last week, Washington was going to be all about gun violence. Specifically, Congress was debating a bill on universal background checks. After the Newtown massacre, after the 3,500…
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Loving Your 'Thickness' Is Not a Barrier to Fitness
Ebony‘s Erika Nicole Kendall says that black America’s health problems are not caused by black women who love their “thick” bodies, and destroying their self-esteem isn’t a solution. We talk a lot about what fat-shaming does to us as a society, but do we ever really talk about what it does to us as individuals?…
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Should a Dinner Guest Call Out Racist Jokes?
( The Root) — “I’m white, but I’ve read an extensive amount of material about race-related issues. In learning more and more about them, some of which I had never even been able to conceive because of my whiteness, I’ve attempted to engage my white peers in order to educate them about how some of their…