culture
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How America Built the Racial Wealth Gap
(The Root) — The cynic might say that except for a small number of exceptional figures like Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey or Michael Jordan, America is not much interested in truly full inclusion for African Americans. Any fair assessment must concede that the black road to full citizenship in America has been marked by a…
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An Ancient Figurine's Unknown History
(The Root) — This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black in Western Art Archive at Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. A perfectly matched intimacy of scale and subject resides in this remarkable image from the ancient past. A…
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For Middle-Class White Girls When Being Privileged Isn't Enough
Clutch magazine‘s Kirsten West Savali responds to a Wall Street Journal op-ed about the college-admissions process. When I read the Wall Street Journal op-ed written by graduating high school senior Suzy Lee Weiss, I was immediately floored by her intelligence, fearlessness and sheer commitment to exposing the discriminatory inequities inherent in the college admission process. Many students rejected…
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The Accidentally Horrible Lines From 'Accidental Racist'
LL Cool J and Brad Paisley have collaborated on a ditty about the roadblocks to racial harmony called “Accidental Racist,” and we have no doubt that it was done with all the best intentions — as well as with all the sophistication about matters of stereotypes and cross-cultural understanding that you’d expect from 12-year-olds about…
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Mandela's Friend: Thatcher Helped Save Him
It’s widely known that Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister who died on Monday at age 87, once called the African National Congress, South Africa’s anti-apartheid party, a “typical terrorist organization” that was “living in cloud-cuckoo land if it thought it was going to run the country.” That “different view” notwithstanding, one of former…
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Must-See: '42' Revisits Important History
(The Root) — The story coming out of Georgia about separate proms for black and white high school students is just the latest example of the ugly history of racial segregation and the ways in which its residue hasn’t been fully erased. It seems that 42, the film about baseball legend Jackie Robinson’s life, is…
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How Facebook Found This Abandoned Child's Parents
An abandoned 4-year-old dubbed “little Jane Doe” has now been identified as Zoe Brown, thanks in part to the nearly 2 million people who posted her photo on Facebook after she was found on a doorstep in South Carolina last Thursday evening, the Huffington Post reports. After her story was widely shared, a tip to…
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‘Mixed Kids Are the Cutest’ Isn’t Cute?
(The Root) — “I’m a Caucasian woman with a biracial child (her father is black). I live in a predominantly white community. Why is it that whenever people discover that I have a ‘mixed’ child, they always say things like, ‘Oh, he/she must be so cute/gorgeous/adorable, those kids are always the best looking. You are…
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Help Georgia Students End Segregated Proms
(The Root) — UPDATED Wednesday, April 10, 2013, at 2:45 EDT: An adviser to the students, Harriet Hollis of the Southwest Georgia Project for Community Education, told Farai Chideya that the students are planning a more private celebration. The Root will bring you more soon about their plans and how they are choosing to make…
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Beer, Drugs and Filthy Conditions: New Orleans Jail Caught on Tape
Louisiana’s Orleans Parish Prison complex has been called “one of the worst large-city jails in the whole country,” and a now-viral video showing an institution “wracked by violence, inmate suicides, overcrowding, dilapidation and mismanagement” has given imagery to that label, Slate reports. Footage that emerged in a federal courtroom this week shows inmates openly drinking,…