The Root

No debate about it; Black female excellence won Harvard University’s annual summer debate competition this year. Sixteen-year-old Jayla Jackson and seventeen-year-old Emani Stanton just made history as the first Black female duo to win the Harvard Debate Council’s annual summer debate competition at Harvard University.Read more...

Kanye West is doing a thing.Read more...

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, (R-Ga.), the quack who makes the other Republicans look moderately sane, was kicked off of Twitter for the second time for sending out crazy tweets about COVID-19 that violated the company’s misinformation policy.

I wanted to tell you a great story about the first time I read The Coldest Winter Ever. I wanted to tell you who told me about it and which parts they raved about and the exact words that were said to convince me to read it. It could have been my college roommate. Or my Mom. Or even some guy I was dating because in…Read more...

On Monday, Naomi Osaka made history once again as the first Black female athlete to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated’s 2021 Swimsuit Issue.

On Monday, a Missouri legislative committee held an invite-only hearing on Critical Race Theory and how the state’s educators should teach racism in K-12 schools. The committee is now under heavy criticism for excluding an enormously important element needed to have any critical and productive discussion on the…Read more...

Dr. Ian Smith has filed an “unlawful discrimination” complaint against ViacomCBS and Dr. Phil’s Stage 29 Productions in relation to being fired as sole host of the CBS show The Doctors. Smith, who first joined the health advice talk show in 2014 as co-host before becoming the single host in September 2020, claims he…Read more...

So for this to make sense for you now the way it made sense to me then, we have to start at the beginning, which is in my living room, in Pittsburgh, on either a Monday or a Wednesday in the winter of either 1987 or 1988.

Republicans are just soooo oversensitive these days. They storm school board meetings, post vitriolic rants on Facebook, and generally act like a 2-year-old who had their favorite toy taken away whenever the topic of critical race theory (CRT) is brought up. Michelle Leete, the Virginia PTA vice president of Training,…Read more...

Michael B. Jordan is opening up about his time working with his Without Remorse costar Lauren London.

It seems things may finally be getting “back on the good foot” when it comes to the circumstances surrounding the James Brown estate.Read more...

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Black conservatives really only exist to parrot narratives for white conservatives. They almost never have an original thought of their own, so they willingly sit on the hands of Republican puppeteers and serve as their “Black friends” who will tow their false narratives…Read more...

It looks like Audible Inc. is adding to its A-list of partnerships such as LeBron James, Steph Curry, Kevin Hart and Kenya Barris—and bringing in a little “U.N.I.T.Y.” On Monday afternoon, the audio storytelling platform announced a multi-project first-look development deal with Queen Latifah and Shakim Compere’s…Read more...

Although the National Football League claims to have 32 franchises—all those logos, mascots and jerseys really mean nothing. When it comes down to it, there are only two NFL teams:

A Florida man became the first person sentenced on felony charges as a result of the Capitol riot on Monday.

On Friday, congressional Democrats introduced a bill to rename forests, streams, lakes, mountain peaks and other landmarks in the country that include offensive language such as racial slurs for Black people, Mexicans and Native Americans. That’s right, good people: The totally non-white supremacist nation which is…Read more...

Remember last week, when The Root reported that Jada Pinkett Smith had been encouraged by daughter Willow to shave her head? While Jada’s cropped locks were at likely in response to the prolonged alopecia she’d discussed on Red Table Talk, we got a little more context on the origin of Willow’s fade on Friday, when she…Read more...

The story of this Formula 1 season has largely been the battle between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton for the World Driver’s Championship. While Verstappen handily won the previous three races, Hamilton took the victory at Sunday’s British Grand Prix after a collision between the two drivers in the opening lap took…Read more...

Francine “Frankie” Lons, the biological mother of R&B singer Keyshia Cole, has died, reportedly due to an overdose, at the age of 61.Read more...

Nike, are we for real still doing this?

Watching the Phoenix Suns and the Milwaukee Bucks play in the best of seven series can teach you a lot about life.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed the state budget, and included in the budget is $75 million in reparations for survivors of forced sterilizations of prison inmates allowed under the state’s eugenics laws. Thousands of women—some of whom were sterilized without their consent as early as 11 years ago—are set to…Read more...

From afros to box braids to high-top fades, Black hair is always a fun discussion to have. Everybody’s personal hair journey is different even if we all—well, mostly all—have similar experiences no matter where you’re from in African America. And what’s super interesting is that if you grew up in a Black household of…Read more...

If “hot girl summer” was a magazine cover...well, now it is, thanks to Sports Illustrated having the profound wisdom to make thee hot girl herself, Megan Thee Stallion, one of its 2021 cover stars. In fact, it’s a woman of color trifecta this round, as Meg joins tennis star Naomi Osaka and model-actress Leyna…Read more...

On December 2, 2020, Chicago rapper G Herbo and a bevy of his associates were indicted on 14 federal charges, ranging from wire fraud to identity theft.

First the U.S. banned the fastest woman in the world—for the uninformed, that’s Sha’Carri Richardson—and now COVID-19 is coming through and crushing the building.

Yeezy is coming! Yeezy is coming! (Or whatever Paul Revere said.)

It’s about that time, again: The Summer Olympic Games officially kick off in Tokyo on Friday.

Isaiah Stokes, who has appeared in television shows such as Law & Order: SVU, Boardwalk Empire and Power has been indicted for murder in New York City by a Queens grand jury and arraigned in Supreme Court.Read more...

Some months ago, I was listening to an episode of a very popular podcast hosted by a very popular person. This particular episode was about a very popular Black movie that featured some very popular Black people. The very popular podcast host, though, is not Black, though he was joined by Black people. In any event,…Read more...

Tennis phenom Coco Gauff announced Sunday that she is withdrawing from competition at the Tokyo Olympics after testing positive for COVID-19.

A federal lawsuit has been filed against Albuquerque’s public school district, accusing the district of discriminating against a Black student due to her hair.

Forty sites and organizations with deeply-rooted ties to Black history will receive more than $3 million in grants from the African-American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, ensuring that they’ll be preserved for years to come.

A tech startup founded by two Black entrepreneurs is getting a $1 million boost, thanks to Pharrell Williams and his Black Ambition prize competition.

Public schools in Texas are one step closer to no longer being required to teach about various American civil rights movements in social studies classes.

An American Psychological Association analysis of body camera footage from more than 100 police officers found that during traffic stops, officers tended to speak to Black men in a less respectful and less friendly tone than they typically did with white men.

Civil rights activist Gloria Richardson, whose fearlessness was famously immortalized in a photo of her pushing away a National Guardsman’s bayonet during a 1963 protest, has died at age 99.

Biz Markie, the rapper best known for his iconic wail over the ’80s classic “Just a Friend,” died at the tragically young age of 57.

Disclaimer: Mild spoilers for Space Jam: A New LegacyRead more...

There’s always going to be a rift between Black people and police officers as long as cops believe even the slightest challenge to their authority warrants their reckless aggression and uses of force no matter how minor the original offense was.Read more...

Sixteen members of a Florida white supremacist gang have been charged in a 12-count racketeering indictment that includes allegations related to weapons and drug distribution as well as kidnapping and murder. The gang is known as The Unforgiven, and if that name sounds familiar, it might not be because you enjoy…Read more...

On a recent episode of The Breakfast Club, the topic of a hypothetical Geto Boys Verzuz N.W.A. event came up, prompting rapper and record producer Scarface to propose a one-on-one battle against Ice Cube. However, Scarface put his creative thinking cap on and came up with something beyond the basic protocol—he…Read more...

Colin Kaepernick has never shied away from being different; it was obvious when he first took a knee for Black lives, and apparently, was true even in childhood, as the biracial child of white adoptive parents. As the activist-athlete announced on Thursday, that’s the story behind I Color Myself Different, an upcoming…Read more...

WNBA star Liz Cambage has withdrawn from the Australian Olympic Team so she can take time to focus on her mental health.

Before we start, The Root would like to issue a disclaimer to never do what this woman did in this story unless you are this woman, who clearly trained in the House of LaBeija, has done at least three overnight shifts at the International House of Pancakes and grew up in the House of “Who you think you’re talking to?”

Earlier this spring, FX announced it had ordered a new television series pilot based on the late Octavia E. Butler’s iconic novel Kindred.Read more...

A white man in California was arrested last week after being found with an arsenal of weapons, ammo, and a manifesto saying he wanted to kill Black, Hispanic and Jewish people.

On April 21, 32-year-old Isiah Brown was shot numerous times by a Spotsylvania County, Va., sheriff’s deputy not long after the same deputy had given him a ride home after his car broke down. The deputy had been called back to the scene to investigate a domestic disturbance, and at the time of the shooting, which the…Read more...

Ain’t it just like the man to shadow ban the player who started the movement and then come back and embrace the movement but not the player?

Pregnancy means a time of joy, full of celebrations and preparations for exciting changes. But in the United States, for Black women on a journey to parenthood, it could mean a direct pathway to incarceration.Read more...