The Root

Each of the two authors who spoke with Michael Harriot for The Root Institute have committed to telling our stories in ways that best represent the texture and richness of our lives. That mission has propelled them to take their passion on the road to learn more about their ancestry.Read more...

We’re at a quintessential moment in our democracy. Without a shadow of a doubt, voting rights is one of the major issues facing our country today. So much of our future depends on our ability to have access to the polls and the levers of power it holds. Yet, Congress went on recess with no voting rights legislation…Read more...

On Thursday night, Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted in the murder of George Floyd, filed an appeal to overturn his conviction without an attorney.Read more...

In the news these days, we hear a lot about Boomers, Millennials and Gen Z and their impact on various parts of our society, including culture, politics and the world of work. Generation X—my generation—is the generation that is often left out of or forgotten during these discussions.Read more...

As the sex-trafficking trial of disgraced R&B singer R. Kelly nears its end, the defense team presented closing arguments in Brooklyn federal court on Thursday.Read more...

Ladies and gentlemen (non-binary folks, too), the WNBA Playoffs are here! What a time to be alive. But before we dig into Thursday night’s festivities, allow me to bring everyone up to speed on the WNBA’s playoff format that’s been in place since 2016:Read more...

Black women have to carefully navigate the workplace to avoid the Angry Black Woman trope when speaking up about injustice. This much is true for the former and current Black women officers who filed a class-action lawsuit against the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.Read more...

Whitney Houston will be getting the biopic treatment (albeit, for the 50-leventh time) soon, thanks to the upcoming feature from Sony and TriStar Pictures, I Wanna Dance With Somebody.Read more...

This weekend, Steph Curry is setting aside his love for basketball in order to embrace another one of his passions: golf.Read more...

“Black Lives Matter” has become a rallying cry for racial justice—as well as a highly organized movement—around the world, but for its co-founder Alicia Garza, its was a childhood spent with a mother who never hesitated to call out injustice in everyday life, and raised her firstborn child to do the same. Now…Read more...

In this episode of “Gov. Ron DeSantis Is Trying to Kill Floridians,” the Florida governor announced a new “symptom-based” approach to COVID-19 quarantine rules, allowing children without symptoms to go to class even if they were exposed to the virus.

We are experiencing the next frontier of digital assets with a peer-to-peer system called Bitcoin, founded in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto and various brave internet visionaries. Today, bitcoin and cryptocurrency have taken over the financial market space. The next generation of internet investors are flocking to this…Read more...

In this multipart series, HBCU alums share their favorite moments from their alma mater as a testament to what these institutions have meant to them.Read more...

Lawmakers hoping to reach a bipartisan compromise on revamping America’s broken policing policies watched it all go the same route as the Fat Boys; despite best efforts, the talks ended with the same issues that have haunted these talks for more than a year.

The world of technology seems to shift and transform every nanosecond, making it that much more difficult to stay on top of what’s new. But staying on top is exactly what Mutale Nkonde and Angela Benton, our experts in this episode of The Root Institute, encourage us to do. Nkonde’s expertise in AI, and Benton’s deep…Read more...

“For many years, what happened in the defendant’s world stayed in the defendant’s world. But no longer.”

After scoring four touchdowns in Monday night’s showdown against the Detroit Lions, you would think Green Bay Packers running back Aaron Jones would have plenty to celebrate. However, during the game, ESPN reports that something awful occurred: The football-shaped medallion he was wearing that contained his father’s…Read more...

“When I show up in a room, there are three things I just know automatically,” says former White House Director of Political Affairs Minyon Moore, also the co-author of the NAACP Award-winning For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics. “One, I walk in the room knowing that I’m Black...I walk in the room knowing…Read more...

On Tuesday, Methodist University announced the suspension of one of their sororities after social media outrage over a racist presentation made by a member featuring Black student football players.Read more...

Nine Oakland police officers have been disciplined following an independent investigation into some racist and sexist posts shared on social media.Read more...

Actor-writer-director-composer Melvin Van Peebles—a Renaissance man who promoted Black economic empowerment and helped usher in a new era of Black filmmaking with his best-known work, the 1971 film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song—died Tuesday night at 89.

If you told me you didn’t play pretend as a child, I wouldn’t believe you. Even as adults, a made-up world from our imagination is probably better than what we have going for us in reality.Read more...

After two years, a trial date has finally been set for Eric Holder, the man who allegedly shot and killed Nipsey Hussle—birth name Ermias Joseph Asghedom—on March 31, 2019 in South Los Angeles.Read more...

The Newberg, Ore., school district isn’t the only one with racist students showing out on the first days of school. Apparently, the school district in Park Hill, Mo., is also catching heat after students circulated a petition to bring back slavery on social media last week.Read more...

It’s been a long, grueling wait thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Netflix’s Dear White People—the brainchild of creative force Justin Simien—has finally returned for its fourth and final season.

After the lights went out on Broadway in 2020 due to the pandemic, and after the brutal killing of George Floyd, a stalwart collective of 300 theater professionals took the opportunity to shine a light in their own impactful way: with a signed petition calling out the Broadway community for its lack of diversity and…Read more...

Trigger Warning: The following article includes descriptions of sexual assault, and harassment.Read more...

Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) is an asshole.

It was allergy season and God couldn’t find a tissue. Finally, he walked into a parking lot and blew his nose onto the punishing asphalt and thus Florida was born.

Yara Shahidi is an award-winning actress, producer, change agent and breakout star of ABC’s Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated series black-ish. Shahidi is now the executive producer and lead of its Freeform spinoff series, grown-ish, where she plays Zoey Johnson, an ambitious, fashion-forward college student, on her…Read more...

Aside from being a terrific basketball player, Boston Celtics All-Star Jaylen Brown is a real one.

When the war against “Critical Race Theory” (placed in quotation marks because what they are calling Critical Race Theory and what Critical Race Theory actually is are two different things) is won by those who would have our children learn only a very whitewashed version of our nation’s history, who will tell our…Read more...

My sister once told me that there was nothing scarier than a white man losing his power. I think she may have been talking about the X-Men but the same applies here as former President Trump—you know, the man who still claims that the election was rigged against him—is reportedly suing his estranged niece and the New…Read more...

Following the first day of witness testimony for the defense on Monday during the sex trafficking trial of R. Kelly, additional witnesses took the stand on Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court.

Although it may seem to some that we are seeing more contributions from Black creators across the media spectrum, the roundtable conversation The Root Institute recently hosted raised some questions about the quality and quantity of what we are being exposed to when it comes to covering the Black community.Read more...

One thing’s for sure, and two things are for certain: Ben Simmons has no intention to ever play for the Philadelphia 76ers again.

Tressie McMillan Cottom is a sociologist, a professor, a writer, and a 2020 MacArthur Fellow—but above all else, she’s a truth-teller. If you’ve read her acclaimed 2019 collection Thick: And Other Essays, you already know this; likewise, if you follow her on Twitter. In fact, McMillan Cottom’s strongly argued takes…Read more...

Sephora’s signature interiors have long been clad in glossy black—but until recently, it was far more difficult to locate Black-owned brands in the beauty emporium’s aisles; a struggle I documented when attempting a month-long Black-owned beauty challenge in February 2019. Of course, much has changed since then; I now…Read more...

The tragic and unexpected passing of The Wire and Lovecraft Country actor Michael K. Williams on Sept. 6 sent both fans and his loved ones reeling, many of whom still are, even weeks after the fact. Since the news of his death, many have honored him and his legacy, echoing a common theme: that Williams was a kind, old…Read more...

On Monday, Jay-Z’s Team Roc, the philanthropic division of his entertainment company Roc Nation, filed a lawsuit against the Kansas City Police Department, alleging that it refused to hand over documents that could help identify potential coverups of police misconduct.Read more...

“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this comes.” It’s one of the most famous lines from one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, The Tragedy of Macbeth—and fans of the Bard have been waiting patiently for the next translation of his work to come the big screen. On Tuesday, we got a wicked, if relatively…Read more...

If you look up the phrase “Black don’t crack” in the dictionary, I’m pretty sure you’ll find a picture of Jada Pinkett Smith there in the definition. (See also: Sanaa Lathan, Angela Bassett, Mary J. Blige, Beyoncé—you get the point.)Read more...

Listen, I don’t know what kind of little racist, homophobic kids they are raising out in Newberg, Ore., but their school district has been making the wildest headlines lately.Read more...

It’s been nearly four years since Me Too became a global movement, forever changing how we talk about sexual violence. But it’s been approximately 15 years since Tarana Burke found the phrase she needed to inspire empathy and empowerment among survivors of sexual violence, understanding that a simple “Me Too” could be…Read more...

“And this one is for the champions. I ain’t lost since I began, yeah.

It’s been entirely too damn long since the holy trinity of Wyclef Jean, Lauryn “L-Boogie” Hill, and Prakazrel “Pras” Michel graced the stage together—15 years to be exact—and even longer since they’ve blessed us with a collaborative body of music. That critically acclaimed album, The Score, was released in 1996 and…Read more...

Say what you want, but here’s what we know to be true: the current state of over-policing in our communities combined with the prison industrial complex have created an existential crisis that needs to be sorted out, sorted through and resolved. The two women Michael Harriot spoke with in this episode of The Root…Read more...

There must be something in the water—or even in the Ciroc—that has so many people speaking disrespectfully on the musical significance, legacy and potency of one Jermaine Dupri Mauldin AKA Jermaine Dupri aka JD aka Don Chi Chi. What started out as understandable bravado from Sean “Diddy” Combs (I still call the man…Read more...

On Sept. 16, three women were visiting New York City and decided to dine at the famous Carmine’s Italian on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. That part is true. But what’s now in dispute were the first stories that came out claiming the three women beat up a hostess for requiring that they prove they were vaccinated…Read more...

For all of his accolades both in and outside of the ring, there’s one accomplishment missing from Oscar De La Hoya’s resume.Read more...