The Root

Issa Rae is by all appearances a new bride—and there was nothing Awkward or Insecure about her incredible wedding photos! The super-producer, writer and star posted a stunning series of photographs by acclaimed wedding photographer Lauren Fair to her Instagram on Monday morning, opening with the actress in a custom…Read more...

There are several topics that the former president of the United States should never discuss: race relations, weight loss, golf, and transgender anything.

Kanye West named one of his albums The Life of Pablo, but perhaps someone can explain The Life of Kanye right now?! You know what, that’s likely an impossible task. Nevermind.Read more...

Even though she hasn’t played tennis in about two months, Naomi Osaka hasn’t missed a beat.

Someone buy Dan Bailey a drink. Or send him an Edible Arrangement. Maybe even a gift card or two. Anything to show appreciation for giving Tucker Carlson the smoke right to his smug face.

Trinity Bethune would like everyone to know that her name is, in fact, Trinity Bethune.

You’d be hard pressed to find a group of people more excited to incriminate themselves everyone that ran up into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Federal prosecutors in New York have asked a judge for permission to add additional allegations to their case against R. Kelly, including claims that members of his entourage bribed a Cook County clerk in 2019 for information on his legal issues and also paid for a fake ID for the late Aaliyah back in 1994.

Brian Chaney, a Black man from Michigan, is suing a suburban police department on allegations that one of its officers wrongfully detained and racially profiled him while he was out on an early morning walk.

We’re back with another riveting roundup of entertainment news! We’re still on a will-they-or-won’t-they rollercoaster when it comes to the Tokyo Olympics—especially since the head of the organization didn’t rule out a possible cancellation amid the rising COVID-19 variant cases—but we do have room to go up for Black…Read more...

Games have always been a little bit more than a hobby for me. They’re my escape, one of the ways I try to decompress when life becomes overwhelming. To say life became overwhelming last year would be an understatement. Like many of you, I’ve struggled immensely throughout the pandemic. What started off as fear in the…Read more...

Of all of the groundbreaking skits that marked the too-brief run of Chappelle’s Show, undoubtedly in everyone’s Top 5 is the “Charlie Murphy True Hollywood Story” (RIP, King) in which the late comedian recalls a basketball face-off with Prince and his entourage at Paisley Park. Memorably, the Purple One hooped circles…Read more...

On Jan. 6—the same day as the whiny wypipo rebellion at the U.S. Capitol—Black woman Keren Prescott was leading a Black Lives Matter protest outside the Connecticut Capitol building when she told an “all lives matter”-spewing white woman, Yuliya Gilshteyn, to “back up,” because she wasn’t wearing a face mask.…Read more...

Lift Every White Voice: The National Clapback AnthemRead more...

Know how I know America is cool with racism? Politicians in Tennessee thought that putting a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first grand wizard of the KKK, in the state Capitol was a good idea in 1978. It only took them over 40 years to finally realize that having a monument to a leader of the KKK in the state…Read more...

I am a proud member of Generation X.Read more...

Boooooy, when I tell you being Black in America means never knowing which mundane and routine thing you are doing will cause you to look suspicious to someone.Read more...

Well, this is a new page from the “Mediocre White Male Entitlement Playbook.” Meghan Markle’s estranged (and just plain strange) father Thomas Markle—who has basically been a terror since the eve of her marriage to Prince Harry—has now come up with a new way to impose himself upon his daughter’s life: through her two…Read more...

White people can’t seem to do anything these days without getting in their feelings about how the world is changing. For some reason, a race announcer in Iowa decided to go on a racist rant against Black people and NFL players who kneel before a race last week.

Congratulations to Lil Nas X on the birth of his “Industry Baby.”Read more...

White rage continues to boil over with bigoted energy putting Black people who are trying their damndest to mind their own business in contentious and often dangerous positions. In the Near West Side neighborhood of Chicago, a white man has been charged with a hate crime and battery after he was alleged to have…Read more...

I think it’s a pretty safe bet that if you bring up Black television theme songs, the theme from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air comes up immediately. If it’s not your favorite, it’s at least on the Mt. Rushmore of Black television theme songs. But what would fill out the other three? I think that’s a much more difficult…Read more...

Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) put racists on notice that she’s not going to be intimated by threats, misspellings, or heavy use of the N-word to stop her from doing her job.

Although news outlets, legislators, school boards, television stations, and even Marjorie Taylor Greene’s contacts inside the QAnon industrial complex can’t seem to find a single K-12 teacher who studied Critical Race Theory and decided to teach it to social studies students, the anti-CRT movement is growing.Read more...

Do you have a hangover after attending Kanye West’s listening party event?Read more...

In addition to being at the top of her craft as a seasoned journalist, Robin Roberts is definitely in the Oprah-class of interviewers who have that magical ability to make an interviewee feel a sense of calm and trust, which results in a powerfully intimate interview.

Plans for a bipartisan probe into the whiny-righty-whitey rebellion at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 appear to be circling the drain after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected two out of five of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Republican picks to sit on the panel. McCarthy responded to Pelosi’s decision by taking his…Read more...

I remember when I became Black.

If you’ve grown weary of wearing your raspberry beret and are looking for some new sounds to blast in the speakers of your little red corvette, then allow me to introduce you to Prince’s Welcome 2 America!

Covid rates have continued to rise throughout the country at honestly the worst time. What should’ve been a fall that marked a true return to pre-pandemic life, has instead been derailed because suddenly everyone thinks they’re an expert in vaccines, despite likely getting a C at best in high school chem-phys. In an…Read more...

“Black women continue to be the blueprint,” tweeted designer Fisayo Longe on Thursday, after seeing some designs eerily familiar to her own in Fendi’s Resort 2022 lookbook. How else can you explain the fact since the U.K.-based Kai Collective launched its signature, ‘60s-inspired “Gaia” print last year, not one, but …Read more...

Yooooooo, what TF is in the water in Mount Laurel, N.J. that has racist white people wilding out on camera like they were spring breakers in, well, New Jersey, probably? It hasn’t even been a full month since Edward Mathews, who I affectionately refer to as New Jersey’s Phony Soprano, was caught in viral video…Read more...

It seems the difficult divorce between Dr. Dre and ex-wife Nicole Young has finally reached some sort of resolution.Read more...

If I’ve learned anything in adulthood, it’s that people can say all the right things, but it doesn’t mean a damn thing if they aren’t backing it up. Take, for instance, all the companies that spoke out against the restrictive voting laws passed by Georgia earlier this year. While multiple law firms and companies like…Read more...

Jordan Peele has gotten out (heh) of whatever creative content vault he was hiding in and has something new to promote.Read more...

Is it just me, or do conservative affirmations always seem to come with some kind of caveat?Read more...

Tell the truth: after over a year spent primarily in lockdown, how many of you were really ready for “Hot Girl Summer” this year? Oh, I know, I know—for many of us, it started off well enough; some us even shed weight during all the time spent indoors (raises hand)—and promptly packed some of it back on again, as the…Read more...

Over the last year, there has been a concerted push for police reform in cities across the country. After two years of debate, Chicago has passed a civilian oversight board to hopefully hold police accountable for misconduct.

To read Akwaeke Emezi is to be constantly reminded that we are all more than flesh and bone. To be in conversation with the bestselling author is to understand what it is to be spirit simply shrouded in flesh—or, as Emezi refers to themselves, drawing on the Igbo spirituality of their native Nigeria, as “ogbanje”.Read more...

Memory is a funny thing. For instance, according to my memory I watched The Arsenio Hall Show regularly and had riveting conversations with my friends about the cultural significance of you-know-who-said-you-know-what-to-you-know-who-about-whatever-it-was-that-had-happened on the show the night before. The truth is,…Read more...

I’m pretty sure if you looked up the phrase “booked and busy” in the dictionary, you’d see a picture of Barack and Michelle Obama.Read more...

I am projecting the Black-ass bat signal into the sky with the following news: Batgirl is Afro-Latina.Read more...

Michaela Coel has been getting her things lately—and deservedly so.Read more...

Like the popular subreddit “Explain Like I’m Five Years Old,” (ELI5), The Root’s “Explain Like I’m a Racist 5-Year-Old” series dissects complex subjects into language simple enough to be understood by a racist baby.Read more...

Long before I knew I was magic I wanted to be an “Around the Way Girl.” At the height of his career, LL Cool J released a song he wrote specifically for Black girls in the hood. The video for the song opens up with a frustrated LL rejecting the premise of what he called a “stuck up girl” and lyrically painting the…Read more...

A Black man in South Carolina is suing the city of Rock Hill, its police department and U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) for defamation after charges against him were dropped in an incident where he was attacked by a police officer for no reason.

The chief corrections counsel for Alaska’s attorney general is now the subject of an investigation by the state’s department of law after researchers found he allegedly operated a secret right-wing Twitter account that he used to spread anti-Jewish propaganda, denounce the Black Lives Matter movement, whine about…Read more...

A 17-year-old girl is making history by becoming the first Black swimmer to represent Zimbabwe in the Olympics. If you’re amazed that it took until 2021 for that to happen, trust me, you’re not alone.Read more...

The Kennedy Center Honors will be welcoming a new class of honorees into the fold soon and one of the additions is sure to have you “dancing in the street.”Read more...

Michael “Air” Jordan may have gotten his nickname because of his leaping ability on the basketball court, but he’s also still up there in the air casting a shadow over LeBron James...metaphorically speaking, of course.Read more...