the root tv
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Watch Out Loud: What Is #BlackBoyJoy and Why Do We Need It?
I was obsessed with Chance the Rapper after watching him live his unapologetic best life at the 2016 Video Music Awards on MTV. He stuck to my rib so much, I asked my managing editor, Danielle Belton, if I could write about him. She obliged my random request. Not only did I write about Chance…
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Watch: Black Trans Women Are Dying
Woman is the nigger of the world. —John Lennon This loaded song lyric is not only a manifestation of a Yoko Ono-hypnotized John Lennon, but a statement that stops you in your tracks. If that’s the case, then what of black women? Moreover, what of transgender women, and to take it even further—what of black…
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Watch: Can the Cast of Going in Style Do Good Morgan Freeman Impressions?
Morgan Freeman, Alan Arkin and Michael Caine star in Zach Braff’s latest film, Going in Style, in which they all play desperate old men who rob a bank because their retirement funds have been squandered. The movie is exactly what it sounds like: curmudgeonly (but still somehow sweet) old men engaging in all kinds of…
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Started From the Blog, Now We’re Here: When Shonda Rhimes Wants to Turn Your Book Into a TV Show, Let Her
We’re living in a DIY culture, and there’s no one more do-it-yourself than bloggers. Blogging is a means of communication, self-expression, culture, news and so much more. And the people who create blogs are typically ridiculously talented and effortlessly wear the responsibility of being a voice for their culture. Bloggers are inspiring, to say the…
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On Maya Angelou’s Birthday, Black Girls Breathe Life Into Her Words
“If I had my druthers, I’d rather be born black, American, female and in the 20th century. And I was. What luck I have,” said Maya Angelou in 2010. With these words, Angelou spoke with the White House on the cusp of receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the highest civilian honor in the United States,…
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Watch: Artist Lina Iris Viktor on the Misconceptions of Blackness in Art, and Painting With Pure Gold
Artist Lina Iris Viktor is known for creating works using a palette of black, majorelle blue and pure 24-karat gold, but she refuses to be tied down to any particular aesthetic. She has a background in film, photography and performance art, so her work is expressed across multiple media. When we spoke, she was intensely…
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Watch: Women at Work: This First Lady Redefines the Role
Editor’s note: For Women’s History Month, The Root is celebrating women from a wide range of professional industries in our video series Women at Work. “People expect women to be a certain way. They expect black women to be a certain way,” says Chirlane McCray, the wife of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. “You…
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Watch: Black Teen Myles Loftin Creates the Most Colorful and Refreshing Images of Black Men in Hoodies
Myles Loftin is a 19-year-old artist with heart and a yearning to see himself represented in media as a young black man who is not a thug, dangerous or gangster. He smiles. He makes jokes. He wears hoodies. So he created HOODED, a photo and video project that features young black men in colorful hoodies.…