There are two types of people who want us to stop using “Karen” as a pejorative term for racist and/or entitled white women. The first is, well, racist and/or entitled white women who complain that it’s unfair that “Karen” is used in such a way (with bonus white tears if their name is actually Karen) despite said…Read more...

For some reason, Republicans in Ohio thought that the proper response to 2019’s mass shooting in Dayton was to make it easier for people to legally shoot each other. Despite previously indicating he may veto the bill, Ohio’s governor signed a “Stand Your Ground” bill into law on Monday.Read more...

Happy New Year! It’s the first Big Beauty Tuesday of 2021—and after the heaviness of 2020, we are understandably looking to lighten up this year, in every way imaginable. “Here’s to a collective sigh and release of what needs to be discarded, dismantled and moved away from as we gather all the good, and move towards a…Read more...

It’s 2021, and we kicked off the first full week on Monday night by getting to know the first-ever Black Bachelor. Introducing Matt James, the leading man of the 25th season of The Bachelor—a season the New York Post has referred to as “the horniest season yet.”Read more...

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley is doing what the kids call clout chasing.

In today’s installment of wild-ass pop culture moments, folks online are ganging up on Cardi B for—get this—not letting her two-year-old daughter Kulture listen to her spicy sex-positive smash hit ‘WAP.’Read more...

Kyrie Irving is a complicated, if not polarizing, dude.Read more...

“The Cut Has a New Editor-in-Chief,” the outlet, a subsidiary of New York magazine announced on Monday afternoon, sharing news that Teen Vogue editor-in-chief Lindsay Peoples Wagner would be returning to the woman-centric style site as its new leader after serving as the site’s fashion market editor from 2015 to 2018.Read more...

On Monday, The Root reported that church officials from several congregations in Washington, D.C., have requested that local police provide extra protection ahead of the whiney and delusional white people convention scheduled for later this week in protest of the election results. The request was made amid a similar…Read more...

Five days after announcing that he tested positive for the coronavirus, Birmingham, Ala., Mayor Randall Woodfin has been hospitalized with COVID-19 complications. The announcement came just days after Woodfin lost his grandmother to the disease.Read more...

The year 2020 was... a lot, largely in part to a global pandemic, the beginning of a long-awaited and necessary racial reckoning in this country, and an anxiety-inducing presidential election, to name a few.

On the field, Josh Jacobs of the Las Vegas Raiders is a shifty running back whose reliability has gone unquestioned since he entered the league in 2019. But off the field, it sounds like the 22-year-old still has plenty of growing up to do after an unfortunate brush with the law.Read more...

Our favorite Last Black Unicorn Tiffany Haddish will be flexing her acting skills in a new sci-fi thriller from MGM, Annapurna, and Brad Pitt’s Plan B.Read more...

You know who really doesn’t give a shit about who wins this Georgia Senate election runoff? The president of people who believe in the seductive powers of Mountain Dew. This man went all the way down to Georgia on the heels of a leaked call in which the president did his best Michael Corleone impersonation, telling…Read more...

February will mark exactly 4 years since the theatrical release of Get Out, Jordan Peele’s directorial debut, which had a unique take on racism in America.Read more...

New year, new games, baybeee! This is going to be an interesting year as we see the Playstation 4 and Xbox One fade into the sunset and, hopefully, the new generation rise in prominence. There aren’t an incredible amount of next-gen (current-gen?) exclusives right now but 2021 looks to fix that with some potential…Read more...

It’s been nearly a year since “Megxit” rocked the British royal family, a move that was perhaps foreshadowed by the October 2019 news that Meghan Markle had filed suit against Associated Newspapers, publisher of the United Kingdom’s Daily Mail and The Mail. The suit alleged a breach of privacy—including copyright…Read more...

Separate claim notices filed by both a victim of Kyle Rittenhouse and the family of another could potentially put the Kenosha Police Department and the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department on the hook for up to $20 million in damages.Read more...

Last week, Becky Hammon made history when she became the first woman to act as an NBA head coach during a regular-season game, assuming coaching duties for the San Antonio Spurs against the Lakers after head coach Gregg Popovich was ejected. And now we have another historic first in professional sports, as Bianca…Read more...

A recently resurfaced Beats by Dre commercial starring “In The Party” rapper Flo Milli hit the Twittersphere today and boy, do I have questions. But first, let’s get a little background on this commercial, shall we?Read more...

After the first round of Paycheck Protection Program loans meant to help small businesses survive shutdowns due to the pandemic went out last year, report after report after report documented how Black businesses were being ignored.Read more...

Candace “If Miss Millie Were Black” Owens stays trying it, doesn’t she?Read more...

We may only be four days into 2021, but if you’re already tired, you’re not alone (aye, Slack was down for us today, too). After all, while the year has (finally!) changed, the circumstances have not: We’re still in the midst of a global pandemic (with another surge, no less), police and civilian racial profilers…Read more...

A group of churches in Washington DC has requested local police provide extra protection ahead of a protest against the election results scheduled for later this week. How’s that saying go again? New year, same old bullshit?Read more...

In case anyone needed another reminder, Rihanna is about sick and tired of us prodding into when exactly her next album is coming out.Read more...

For a portion of his 22 years, Bernard Jemison has been incarcerated at Kilby Correctional Facility, a maximum-security penitentiary located just outside of Montgomery, Ala. According to Alabama Department of Corrections documents reviewed by The Root, in September, 1031 men were housed in a prison designed to hold…Read more...

Since making its debut in the aftermath of ESPN’s brilliant The Last Dance miniseries, Michael Jordan’s infamous “and I took that personally” meme has not only provided us with plenty of laughs, it’s also articulated exactly how many of us have felt at some point after being slighted. And with the Golden State…Read more...

Recent motions filed by attorneys for Gregory and Travis McMichael—the father and son accused of chasing down and fatally shooting Ahmaud Arbery near Brunswick, Ga., on February 23, 2020—appear to have one agenda in mind: Remove all indications of Arbery’s very humanity. In the motions filed on Dec. 30 and 31, not…Read more...

It’s 2021 and love is fizzling out of the new year’s air so far—at least for one celebrity couple.Read more...

Damn, the regular season is over already? I guess let’s get to what all went down this weekend.Read more...

Makeup mogul Pat McGrath, fondly known as “The Mother of Makeup” by fashion and beauty insiders, received a well-deserved honor by Queen Elizabeth II for the new year. Previously named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2014 for her services to the beauty and fashion industries, McGrath, who has…Read more...

New year, new Netflix Strong Black Lead content.Read more...

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A 30-year-old Black U.S. Army drill sergeant was fatally shot on New Years Day in San Antonio, Texas, in an unsolved incident that has cut short a promising career in the military and the soldier’s life with her young son.

Malachi Love-Robinson, the Florida man who spent much of his teenage years posing as a medical doctor, is again in trouble with the law.

The new year started for many of us with the long-debated $600 in stimulus money from the federal government landing in our bank accounts. It’s an appreciated return on our own taxes paid into the government’s coffers, and so I personally give thanks for it.

Whenever Black people collectively and specifically speak to the realities of anti-Blackness, there is often outraged and offended backlash from people who would rather racism continue unabated and—importantly—unacknowledged as racism. Because to acknowledge racism would necessitate people who consider themselves…Read more...

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but 2021 won’t be that much different from 2020 if the country (and the world for that matter) doesn’t get its vaccine act together.

Before the close of last year, Minneapolis police recorded the fatal police shooting of a Black man named Dolal Idd. Idd was the first person killed by cops in the city since George Floyd in May of 2020.

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Kirby Fighters 2 came out recently (see: 3+ months ago), and while it’s not my thing at all, it did remind me that there hasn’t been a memorable, mainline Kirby game since 2016's Planet Robobot for the Nintendo 3DS. And that got me thinking about how much Kirby shit I bought in 2020 despite not enjoying a single entry…Read more...

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If “Karens never learn” was a person, she would have to be the white woman who accosted Jazz musician Keyon Harrold and his 14-year-old son at the Arlo Hotel in Soho, New York, over a cell phone she loudly and wrongly accused the teen of stealing.Read more...

If you weren’t one of the millions resigned to spend New Year’s Eve alone this year (thanks again, COVID), you may have placed special significance on who joined you to welcome in 2021, a year we hope will guide us out of the darkness, despair and disillusionment of that year (come through, Age of Aquarius!). For us…Read more...

By now you have all seen the viral video of the “Twisted Tea” incident in which the tea is a white man got shit twisted and then got his cap twisted after twisting his mouth to say the n-word to a Black man several times. Now, that Black man has spoken publicly to fill us in on what happened before a bystander started…Read more...

This past Halloween, Hip Hop lost one of its greats. MF DOOM, aka Metal Face, aka King Geedorah, aka Viktor Vaughn, aka The Villian was as eccentric as he was talented and through both traits, he built an underground following and a Hip Hop legacy that is literally like nothing we’ve seen before. This is a man who…Read more...

Having faith in those around us is the backbone of building community. In a year that has kicked Black people down over and over again, it is crucial that on Imani, the seventh day of Kwanzaa, we continue to build faith in the places that build up the community around us. The following places focus on providing faith,…Read more...

The story of Anjanette Young—the 50-year-old social worker who was undressing when Chicago police officers barged into her home in February 2019 and made her wait handcuffed and naked as cops ignored her pleas to get dressed while they searched for a felon who did not live there—has become another upsetting example of…Read more...

It appears that for years and even decades the Philadelphia criminal justice system has shown a pattern of locking up Black men for crimes they didn’t commit based on the work of corrupt police officers and conviction-happy courts that never really consider that a Black defendant might be getting railroaded despite a…Read more...

For better or for worse, in many ways, 2020 was defined by capitalism, a system unprepared to provide as many hospital beds as there are sick people during a pandemic. Or PPE gear to health care workers exposed to those sick people. Or even face masks to those ordinary people just trying to shop for groceries who are…Read more...