danielle belton
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Sophia Chang and The Root's Danielle Belton on Race, Hip-Hop, Friendship and Being The Baddest Bitch in the Room
We laugh a lot. A lot. And we’re very good friends. And one of us wrote a book (psst … it’s called The Baddest Bitch in the Room and it’s available on Audible right now). But probably the most fascinating thing about being The Root’s editor-in-chief, Danielle Belton, and former music industry veteran-turned-author Sophia Chang—and…
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Being ‘The Black Snob’ Was a Joke, Until the Day I Actually Became One
“I don’t know how you ended up so bougie when we came out of the same family,” said my baby sister, one day over the phone. I was taken aback. Me? Bougie? And yet, I was. Painfully so. And had been, at this point, for several years. But I was still offended. At the time…
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The Root 100 Gala Takes the Cake, Yet Again, as the Best and Blackest Night of the Year
“We had a lot of competition in the beginning, a lot of imitators but they’ve fallen away. And The Root’s still here.” – Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Root Co-founder text Every Root 100 gala is special, but this year was particularly momentous. Along with celebrating our 100 honorees, The Root also celebrated its 10th…
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The Hangover: We've Finally Recovered from The Root 100 Gala (and Gee, Did We Clean Up Nice)
What do you get when you put hundreds of well-dressed black folk, a great DJ, an open bar, and boundless black excellence into a trendy event space in New York City ? Well, if you’re me, you likely get a weeklong hangover, but you also get The Root 100 gala, our annual celebration of the…
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The 2018 Root 100 Gala Celebrates Another Year of Black Excellence!
We celebrate black excellence every day here at The Root, but there’s one event where we celebrate the most influential black Americans of the year: our annual Root 100 gala. 2018’s list of luminaries, nominated in part by our faithful readers, span all walks of life: from activists to artists, singers to scientists, politicians to…
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Phenomenal Women: On the Transformative Power of Black Women
Editor’s note: This story was written for an event where The Root was a media sponsor. On a rainy afternoon in August, Valerie Jarrett, April Ryan, Alicia Garza and the Rev. Dr. Renita Weems—truth-tellers, as I refer to them—descended on Lola’s in Martha’s Vineyard to discuss the intersections of race, gender and power in America.…
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The Root Packs the House for Very Smart Brothas' and The Glow Up's Boss Moves Event in Washington, D.C.
Do people still call Washington, D.C., Chocolate City? I’m asking for a friend and also because my people, my people, you guys showed up and showed out at our Very Smart Brothas and The Glow Up Boss Moves event on Thursday, July 19th—sponsored by Toyota—filling the Long View Gallery with beautiful boss blackness that could…
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It’s an Explanation, Not an Excuse
“He needs someone to treat him like the teacher treated Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker,” I said. The “he” I was referring to was Kanye West and his latest “Make America great again”-fueled, “deep thoughts” tweets that scream mania, but he insists he’s fine. (That is so something a manic person would say. When…