Very Smart Brothas
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7 Things That Make White People Interrupt You When You’re Minding Your Own Damn Business
One truism in life, my brother, is that white people do not believe in personal space. Another, my brother, is that white people love to speak to black people (not sure how the other colored communities fare) about lots of random shit that we probably don’t feel like talking about ’PACIFICALLY when we don’t feel…
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A Sentence-by-Sentence Reply to This Racist-ish and Awkwardly Punctuated Facebook Message I Got Yesterday
Jhon [redacted] and I are not friends, but I hope one day that we will be. If I am ever in London (where he apparently lives), I’ll make every effort to stop past [redacted] (where he apparently works) and introduce myself. Until then, however, I’ll have to settle for replying to this glorious message he…
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All of Kanye West’s GOOD Fridays Tracks, Ranked
Seven years ago this month, we were all giddy with the hype and secrecy behind Kanye West’s upcoming fifth studio album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Many consider that album to be Kanye’s magnum opus (not me … that honor belongs to Graduation) and the last vestige of the “Old Kanye” before he completely succumbed…
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10 Thoughts About Queen Sugar and Last Night’s Season Finale
Warning: There will be spoilers. You have been warned. If you haven’t seen it yet, get your life. 1. It was fun watching the postshow special and trying to see myself in the crowd (I didn’t, but I also didn’t watch the whole thing—had to get the babies to sleep and whatnot). The experience of…
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White Meats I Personally Find Much Sexier Than Blake Shelton, Ranked
20. Chicken lunch meat 19. Chicken McNuggets 18. Uncooked Oscar Mayer turkey bacon 17. Turkey lunch meat 16. Campbell’s chicken-noodle-soup chicken 15. The tiny white cubes found in mortadella 14. The fatty part of the Easter ham my mom used to make that she’d chop up and put into eggs for breakfast and make them…
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Babies Aren’t Birth Control. Field Trips Are Birth Control
One of the great things about being a parent is watching your child (or children) blossom into whatever kind of person they’ll become. The possibilities are endless, and that potential can warm even the coldest heart. Yay, babies and kids and shit. Part of this blossoming typically includes moving through the ranks of education, from…
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Was Get Out More Funny or Scary?
That Get Out will compete as a comedy during awards season is not a surprise. Although packed with thrills and scares, it ultimately exists as social satire—which, while not always funny, is a form of comedy. Also, this comedy distinction makes it more likely to win within its categories. For myriad annoying-as-the-fuck reasons, comedies, when…
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White People Are Weird! Why Are Y’all So Damn Weird? Can Y’all Stop Being So Damn Weird?
Others, including The Root’s staff writer Michael Harriot, have already written about the support Sean Hannity received after some of his sponsors cut ties with him for having alleged child molester Roy Moore on his show to explain his tendency to date teens. We know, already, that this support at all costs is hypocritical. And…
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My Cousin Was Lynched. Here’s How It Changed My Life
I first learned of my cousin’s lynching when I was 10 years old. During the summer, I often spent time at my uncle Johnny’s house, but that summer, my great-grandmother, a wizened old black woman whose face spoke of years of enduring the weight of patriarchy and white supremacy, was often there, too. Well into…