As the father of a baby person—and also the uncle of some baby people—I’ve spent a disproportionate amount of time (for an adult) at Chuck E. Cheese’s in the past three years. Birthday parties, potty-train parties, random Saturdays when you’re babysitting your nephew and don’t have shit else to do—I’ve been there…
As I noted yesterday, Becky With the Bold Hands went through the entire gamut of aggrieved white weaponry when she was detained by police officers for attempting to pet a black woman’s dog without permission. Tears, kicks, threats, panic attacks smoothly transitioning into lucid vulgarities—it was like watching…
On the list of “Headlines I’ve always wished to write but assumed I’d never have the chance to,” “White Person Arrested for Petting a Black Person’s Dog Without Permission” might actually be No. 1, narrowly beating “Zimmerman Stampeded in Pamplona; Remains Yet to Be Found” and “Reparations Approved by Congress on One…
You’d think learning that Sarah Braasch—the woman who called the police on Yale graduate student Lolade Siyonbola for #NappingWhileBlack—is a philosophy Ph.D. candidate who’s studied gender and law would add something to this story. A surprise, perhaps, that a person who has undoubtedly encountered lessons on…
1. Zero fucks
I wrote about white people gentrifying fried-bologna sandwiches last week.
Updated Thursday, April 26, 2018, 3:25 p.m. EDT: John Neidich, the owner of the Happiest Hour, issued this statement to The Root:
I am asked, frequently, by people who happen to be white and also happen to read my work (or perhaps happened to listen to me speak) about how to be a better white person. I’m often compelled to answer, “Go to the gym, I guess, and be nice to bartenders.” Which is an adequate answer, but not quite the answer they’re…
Back when I was a high school English teacher, I had a white female colleague (“Katie”) who not only dated black men but was also one of those white women who exclusively date black men and let everyone know that they only date black men whatever chance they get.
As is the case with many people who work remotely, I spend a considerable amount of time in coffee shops and cafés. I am in one now, actually, and I am currently eating Brussels spouts because they’re healthy and tasty and because the managers at said shop are so impressed with my luscious beard that they allow me to…
Are you going to ask a question? Because right now you’re just stating facts. Which I appreciate—yay, facts! I just want to know if there’s a question there.
1. Be black.
Admittedly, when juxtaposed against the assemblage of 934-year-old white men who make up the Senate, Mark Zuckerberg’s relative youth is conspicuous, as it would also be if he were in a room with a troop of vampires, or perhaps the exhumed and propped-up bodies of Genghis Khan and—I don’t know—a fucking velociraptor.
I grew up in a Christian household. Both of my parents were raised Baptist, and they raised me as one, but I wouldn’t quite say that we were practicing. We didn’t go to church very often, and we mostly just prayed before eating and while hoping that the Pirates would win the pennant. And while there were Bibles…
We already know about nigga/nigger, but there are more!
1. Because “nigga” rhymes with a shitload of things, which comes in handy during freestyle rap cyphers at 3 a.m. at IHOP.
I’ve included references to East Liberty—a neighborhood in Pittsburgh’s East End—in pieces I’ve written for VSB, Ebony, Slate and GQ, and it’s peppered throughout my book. There’s an entire chapter, for instance, devoted to the changes it’s undergone in the past 20 years.
One of the great disappointments in my life—perhaps the greatest disappointment, really—is that black people in America do not possess the ability to be racist. We can try our damnedest and hate our hardest, but because of the way racism works, we’ll never quite be able to wield the sought-after status of “racist.”…
In a ceremony televised on Fox News and the Food Network, the New Yorker’s “roving food correspondent” Helen Rosner was awarded the 2018 “I Was Told by AppleCare” prize for Unapologetic Whiteness.
If you’re as big a fan of True Romance as I am—and consider it, as I do, the quintessential Tony Scott film—perhaps you’ve imagined how it would look if Drexl (the dreadlocked pimp played by Gary Oldman) and Floyd (the perpetually stoned roommate played by Brad Pitt) decided to clone themselves a dozen times, and then…
