It’s not my fault. You know black people—we never accept responsibilities for our actions.

Pssst! Deputy Managing Editor Yesha Callahan is off today flying to the BET Awards, so I get to break all the usual protocol! If it were not for this necessary explanation, I wouldn’t even write this lede. But today’s mailbag will focus on one specific topic, namely the opinion piece titled, “White people Are Cowards.”

Deputy Managing Editor Yesha Callahan is gonna be mad at this short-ass lede, but today there’s no need to pussyfoot around. We all know why we’re here, so let’s address the elephant in the room.

What is beef?

Hi, everyone, my name is Stephen A. Crockett Jr. I’m 6 feet 2 and love old movies.

Aside from Deputy Managing Editor Yesha Callahan, whose primary job is waking up at the crack of dawn to harass me about ledes and how long it takes me to write, most of the staff at The Root are usually busy doing multiple things at once, according to our readers. [Editor’s note: Some of us don’t have the luxury of…

As I was digging through this week’s selection of emails, tweets, direct messages and comments trying to figure out why everyone is so angry, Deputy Managing Editor Yesha Callahan contacted me to harass me about an intro.

Once upon a time, not long ago, when people wore pajamas and lived life slow, when laws were stern and justice stood, and Negroes didn’t come to white neighborhoods, there were some wypipo who were misled by some more white people. Here’s what they said: “Me and you, Brad, we’re gonna get real mad. And send some…

Don’t hate me for this.

It’s 4/20, so today’s collection of tweets, direct messages, emails and comments is dedicated to all the people who ...

It’s Good Friday and Passover Eve. The Root’s deputy managing editor, Yesha Callahan, is not here to force me to write an extensive lede because last night, Very Smart Brothas and The Glow Up had their first joint event, Urban by Nature, in Los Angeles. A lot of the staff from The Root attended, but they wouldn’t let…

Welcome back to the Friday Clapback Mailbag: You already know what this is, so don’t be surprised by the collection of tweets, emails and DMs we receive from people who read The Root.

Yesterday, after discovering that the Cleveland Cavaliers traded Isaiah Thomas, Dwyane Wade, Derrick Rose, Channing Iman Shumpert, Jae Crowder, Winston Churchill and Jesus H. Christ for a half-eaten bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, in a failed attempt to make a joke, I suggested that I was leaving The Root:

Hey, look, guys, I need to admit something: This whole mailbag thing may have been a bad idea.

It seems like only yesterday that we began highlighting the emails, tweets, comments and messages from our readers. As we close out 2017, we would like to thank our haters because we don’t know where we’d be without you. (Actually, we do know where we’d be without you. We’d be fractionally happier, I’d probably have a…

Yesterday, Deputy Managing Editor Yesha Callahan told me, and I quote: “No one wants to wait around for the mailbag tomorrow ... and by ‘no one,’ I mean me.”

You’re the real racists.

I have a confession. The Root’s staff is going to kill me for revealing this top secret information, but in the spirit of openness and honesty, I feel it needs to be said, so here goes:

In the wake of the Thanksgiving holiday, we would like to offer a kinder, gentler Clapback Mailbag this week. Instead of clapping back at the people who send emails, tweets and direct messages, we would like to thank our haters, because without them, where would we be?