The Root

Greetings fellow Super Negroes! Today is the day that we’ve all been (arguably) waiting for, the Negro Soulstice. If you’re just now ascending into higher consciousness, let me be the first to welcome you into the fold. And by “the fold,” I mean the League of Extraordinary Negroes.

Monday’s Best Deals | Kinja Deals

In the latest example of “the man” keeping a good Caucasian woman down, the family of an 18-year-old Georgia woman has asked the Trump administration to intervene in her unusually fair jail sentence for flouting COVID-19 protocols in the Cayman Islands.

Welp, it finally happened. After months of contentious negotiations between groups of people who have plenty of money who make decisions that greatly affect people who don’t, Senate officials announced the bipartisan $900 billion coronavirus stimulus package—one that will provide most Americans with $600 to help make…Read more...

On Sunday the lead attorney for the city of Chicago, Mark Flessner, resigned from his role as Corporation Counsel for the city of Chicago via an email sent to staff.

The only thing weirder than the fact that a monument of a dude who straight up betrayed the United States exists in the nation’s Capitol, representing the state of Virginia, is the fact it’s been there for over 100 years. Well, at least it was, as Virginia has finally taken the step of removing the statue.Read more...

This year has done a number on us all in various ways. The “spare time” we’ve been afforded during the lockdown has also made more room for extra existential thoughts.

Not only is Milwaukee Bucks guard Jrue Holiday a beast on both ends of the court, but by all accounts, he’s long been one of the best teammates in the entire league—as evidenced by the fact that he received the 2019-20 Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year Award last season.Read more...

Imagine Michael Jackson singing about crying over rivers.Read more...

There’s a reason why white people—especially conservatives—are always so blind to their own racism: They view everything through a lens of whiteness.Read more...

There was football this weekend? Oh. Let’s get to it.Read more...

Jamaal Bowman believes the Democratic Party needs a makeover. That’s why he’s been so outspoken over former President Barack Obama’s anti-defund the police remarks. Of course, he’s not dissing the first negro-in-chief. Bowman just believes Obama isn’t a relevant voice who can speak to the millions of people who rose…Read more...

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JUST IN: The Root is in final talks to acquire NBC in an unprecedented deal.Read more...

This year was marked by a movement towards racial reckoning in America, including a recognition of the historic injustices done towards Black people in this country via policing and also from a whole host of other institutions.

Trump and his criminal cronies are escalating their ideas of how to deny the results of November’s election.

Discounted Razer Kraken headsets and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War a lead Sunday’s best deals.

I can’t lie y’all—I’m sick and tired of the global nightmare that is the coronavirus, which is why I’m not one of the people who feels squeamish about taking a COVID-19 vaccine. But it sounds like coronavirus might not yet be sick of us.

The relatives of one of the men who were in the Tuskegee syphilis study say they will take the COVID-19 vaccine as soon as they can get it.

In the midst this year’s national protests against the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and numerous other Black Americans, video clips posted by reporters and other people on social media showed police across the country responding to the protests with violence that exhibited much of the brutality…Read more...

What do you get the person who has given so many so much—in many cases, the gift of care, comfort and survival—this year? As 2020 comes to a close, the indisputable heroes in our midst are essential workers, especially those who’ve risked their own health, lives, and constant burnout to care for those with COVID-19.…Read more...

An HP Envy x360 convertible laptop and a TCL 50-inch 4K smart tv lead Saturday’s best deals.

The Federal Drug Administration has authorized a second COVID-19 vaccine, opening the door for more people to receive doses against the virus which brought the country to a halt this year and continues to rack up deaths.

Conservative America would have you believe that Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization and that every BLM protest is a stage for violence, looting and assaults on police officers—despite the fact that a strong majority of protests against systemic racism in policing aren’t violent at all. What anti-BLM people…Read more...

In further proof that Trump supporters are the worst kind of trash, a Black family in Texas had their cars set ablaze and “Trump 2020” spray-painted on their garage door.

Can you believe it’s nearly the end of 2020—and amid everything else, in most states in America we’re still asking for permission to wear our hair as we please? While the freedom to wear naturally textured or traditional Black hairstyles may seem purely aesthetic to the willfully ignorant some, it is in fact part of…Read more...

The government is at the risk of being shut down because, in the eleventh hour, some asshole senator from Fuckstick, Fuckville, has decided that it’s more important to him to screw over President-elect Joe Biden than it is to pass this shitty-ass package into law so that Americans can get some relief.

You may have not been named Time’s Person of the Year (unless President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is reading this right now), but you get to shuffle through yet another list of trailers! Also, because I missed you last week, you’re getting an extra helping of trailers this week to carry…Read more...

I believe most people are reasonable.Read more...

Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller is following in the president’s petty footsteps as he’s ordered a “holiday pause” on briefings with President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team because the goal of this administration must be to annoy the fuck out everyone.

Hey nieces and nephews!Read more...

As the historic campaign to distribute COVID-19 vaccines across the country kicked off this week, many lawmakers, public health experts, and newsrooms across the country have paid special attention to Black Americans’ distrust in a coronavirus vaccine.Read more...

2020 is almost over. Soon, we’ll be embarking on a new year. Now that’s change we can believe in.Read more...

Of all the adjectives we’d use to describe 2020, “good” wouldn’t exactly top the list. But as this most eventful year comes to a close, hosting literary icon and activist Nikki Giovanni on our new podcast, The Root Presents: It’s Lit! will undoubtedly be one of its high points. Ironically, to hear the legendary poet…Read more...

You may have been pleasantly surprised to see Gabrielle Union urging you to make it a #BuyBlack Friday on Facebook Live this year, but like her now-decades-long career in the industry (“I’m almost 50 and [they] treat me like an ingenue,” she jokes), don’t call it a comeback—or a trend. She’s been about that #BuyBlack…Read more...

One would think that seven years of development time would result in one of the most polished games ever, but, uh, nah. The game is so broken on console that Sony has taken the unprecedented step of completely removing it from the PlayStation Store.Read more...

Since March, the coronavirus has unleashed all types of unbridled hell on both professional and collegiate sports. But of all the postponements, outbreaks, and whatever other madness that coaches have faced during this unprecedented time, Houston Cougars basketball coach Kelvin Sampson has been got slapped with a…Read more...

Has anything in the world of politics been more stressful than the 2020 election season? If the reality TV drama that was the presidential race wasn’t enough, the Georgia Senate runoff elections are shaping up to be a battle between folks who just want to cast their ballots and folks who seem hellbent on making voting…Read more...

Once upon a time, when NBA players were still allowed to play defense and the New York Knicks were still a professional basketball team, the Minnesota Timberwolves did a very stupid thing.

Someone get the Psychic Friends Network on the phone and ask them if they saw this coming! Specifically, asking them if they saw it going down this way!Read more...

My homeboy Lavelle and I had this thing we did when a kid wanted to fight me and I didn’t want to fight. I would act like I was taking off my shirt and Lavelle knew that was his cue to jump in and act like he was breaking it up. I was rail-thin growing up. I reached my full man height (6 foot, 2 inches) as a teen but…Read more...

Growing up, I knew the minute the Christmas tree was dragged into the house that Christmas songs would soon follow. And Christmas originals sung by Black artists are more than just fun yuletide ditties. They are immersive musical experiences that make it close to impossible to not get up and dance.

True confession time: I am a veteran “Maxxinista.” If you don’t know what that is, you obviously never had the unique privilege of growing up near a T.J. Maxx—it was even my first part-time job! A decade later, I spent years modeling for the brand, so suffice to say, the Maxx and I—and its equally well-priced sister…Read more...

As the nation waits for congressional lawmakers to reach a resolution on a second stimulus bill—nine months after the coronavirus pandemic began disrupting the lives of Americans around the country—a group of Black female House Democrats is challenging President-elect Joe Biden to offer more substantial relief to…Read more...

In the beginning, God took six days to create the Earth, all of the animals and humans. Adam and Eve, the original Michelle and Barack, were living the life, running around butt-naked until Lucifer, an incredibly talented choir director, ruined everything by convincing Eve to serve Adam a tainted fruit salad. That’s…Read more...

A Black man in Louisiana who was serving a life sentence over two bags of weed worth only $20 has finally been freed from prison after 12 years.

Shaft and The Banker star Samuel L. Jackson is set to star in a new limited series for Apple+ TV, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey. The six-episode limited series is based on the critically acclaimed novel of the same name by Walter Mosley, with Mosley tapped to write the screen adaptation as well executive produce…Read more...

If there’s one gift the work-from-home set would likely love to receive this season, it’s boundaries. While there are definite benefits to eschewing the commute and daily lunch budget for comfortable pants (or none at all) and working from bed (if you insist), there are also significant downsides as the lines between…Read more...

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill into law on Tuesday that would ban hate symbols from being sold on state property.Read more...

Listen: Stories about Black men spending years and even decades behind bars for crimes they didn’t commit are never stories you want to hear. But there are certain stories where the degree of racism, injustice and cruel behavior on the part of law enforcement and the criminal justice system is so inconceivably…Read more...