The Root

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You in the virtual hood now, baby! The 2020 BET Hip Hop Awards debuted on Tuesday night and we’re here to give you that awards show scoop.

A postal worker in Kentucky was hit with federal charges after it was found he allegedly dumped a large amount of mail in the dumpster, including over 100 absentee ballots.Read more...

Having lived in Arizona for the last 17 years, I can safely testify that Scottsdale is the fucking worst. I’m currently apartment hunting and I haven’t even looked in Scottsdale because it’s, empirically, The Worst™. Think I’m being hyperbolic? Well, a Scottsdale man was arrested this weekend after telling a Black man…Read more...

For some reason, white people haven’t made the correlation that racism often comes at a hefty price these days. Columbus, Ohio, learned this lesson the hard way after the city voted to settle a former officer’s discrimination suit against the Columbus Division of Police for nearly half a million dollars.Read more...

At some point, folks are gonna stop worrying about how Cardi B spends her money, and Cardi is going to stop rising to take the bait. But today is not that day, and what y’all not about to do is project your racism onto her retail therapy—namely, her extensive and much-written-about collection of Birkins. Anyone…Read more...

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is looking into a police shooting involving a teenager that occurred in Sylvester, Ga., Saturday.Read more...

Atlanta might have one of the highest concentrations of Black folks in the country, but it also ranks among the lowest in economic mobility within our communities. So in being the largest nonprofit center in the country that’s devoted to empowering Black entrepreneurs and small business owners, the Atlanta-based …Read more...

Allegations about a racist, sexist culture at the Virginia Military Institute, the oldest state-funded military academy in the country, are certainly not new—particularly for a school that has such unapologetically close ties to the Confederacy. But a series of reports about racism at the school, followed by a call…Read more...

Do you know why the Department of Justice was trying to get a defamation lawsuit against President Trump by magazine columnist, E. Jean Carroll, who claimed that the president raped her in a department store dressing room, thrown out?

Buying Black may be more on-trend than ever, but how do we celebrate and sustain Black businesses to ensure they’re built to last? A new video podcast series by American Express aims to do exactly that, Built to Last, hosted by New York Times bestselling author, journalist, producer, and former Editor-in-Chief of Teen…Read more...

Darnella Frazier, the teenager who recorded the footage of George Floyd’s death, will be presented the PEN/Benenson Courage Award in December for capturing the video that acted as a catalyst for what has arguably been the largest and most continuous Black Lives Matter movement push that the nation and the world have…Read more...

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If there was ever a time to cocoon yourself in the escapism and solace of books, it’s been this three-quarter year pandemic. We’ve had more unscheduled free time available for reading, a hobby that gets so easily de-prioritized in our gotta-be-here, need-to-do-that schedules, and in a presidency and COVID-embattled…Read more...

White people looooove to police Black bodies, and within the sports landscape, there’s no greater example of this phenomenon than embattled quarterback Cam Newton.Read more...

There was a time after I’d just broken up with my girlfriend when I believed that everything that was happening was secretly a sign from God or the universe that I’d made the wrong choice. I was desperate because I was single and secretly feeling like I may be this way forever. Desperation does that. It makes…Read more...

In July, we reported that Colin Kaepernick and Ava DuVernay were combining superpowers to develop Colin in Black & White, a new Netflix limited series which “will focus on Kaepernick’s formative high school years, lending meaningful insight into the acts and experiences that led him to become the activist he is…Read more...

To fans who would like a piece of memorabilia to honor the late Chadwick Boseman and are able to afford it—there’s something pretty damn valuable that may catch your eye.Read more...

So...are you scared yet? Has this year of interminable terrors thrown enough your way for you to grasp the profound gravity of the situation we’re in? Or are you more the type to slip into zombie-like zen in moments of crisis? Maybe comfort eating is your coping strategy—in which case, you’re likely already high on…Read more...

Does anyone remember Michael J. Reynolds, the former officer with the New York Police Department who flew to Nashville, Tenn., to attend a 3-day bachelor party in 2018 and ended up breaking into the home of Black woman Conese Halliburton and her four sons, who lived next to the Airbnb he was staying in? You might…Read more...

As soon as Walter Wallace Jr. collapsed on the ground, his mother rushed to his side.

Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state who should’ve been the first female president if not for Russia fucking with the votes, celebrated her 73rd birthday Monday. Clinton’s birthday just so happened to fall on the same day Senate Republicans were voting to force judge Amy Coney Barrett onto the Supreme Court.

“Frenemies.” We’ve all had them—those not-quite friendships that seem to thrive on competition rather than compassion. Sadly, in a world where we are frequently told “there can only be one,” Black women often come to know this dynamic better than most. While we have become well aware of the dangers of toxic…Read more...

Move over Mr. and Mrs. Smith—and make way for the Shadow Force!Read more...

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My mother taught English in D.C. Public Schools for more than 50 years. One day, I went to her class to help her carry some boxes down to her car when I saw “Let’s get that pizza” written on the chalkboard. I laughed because my mother, who is a wizard of words and a waste of time to play Scrabble against (seriously, I…Read more...

It’s nearly impossible to adequately express the range of feelings and emotions that occur when we lose someone as pivotal to our history as the late Rep. John Lewis. For creatives, it’s a type of block usually dissolved by expressing oneself in another way—through art.

Hopefully, the third time is the charm for a measure to remove racist language from Alabama’s state constitution.Read more...

Boooooy, when I tell you I can’t stand Trump or his minions.Read more...

An officer for the New York City Police Department was suspended without pay after a video of him saying “Trump 2020,” over the loudspeaker of his patrol cruiser was spread on social media.Read more...

When one considers the scope of white privilege, it’s difficult to imagine any contemporary entity—or historical, for that matter—that encompasses it more broadly than the British monarchy. Throughout history, the family now known as the Windsors has symbolized not only the bastion of whiteness known as the British…Read more...

If you’ve had enough of Kenya Barris, 2020 is really not your year.Read more...

Dozens of ballots were destroyed after a fire was ignited inside a ballot drop box in Boston.Read more...

One of the buzziest stories of the past weekend was no doubt old news to many Black journalists, particularly those who’ve spent time at Condé Nast—or, “Condé Nasty,” the moniker repeated in a Saturday New York Times article titled “The White Issue: Has Anna Wintour’s Diversity Push Come Too Late?” As the media world…Read more...

The superintendent of Virginia Military Institute, the country’s oldest state-funded military college, resigned Monday morning after Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and other top-elected officials called for an independent investigation into the school’s “appalling culture of ongoing racism.”Read more...

Under NCAA guidelines, the most serious violation a school can commit is a Level I violation. These typically “undermine the integrity of college sports” and pretty much mean somebody’s ass is about to be fired.Read more...

The theme song for the beloved HBCU-based series A Different World notes that “it’s a different world than where you come from!” That lyric couldn’t be truer than in 2020, where our “different world” consists of virtual events in lieu of in-person events.Read more...

Last summer, Marvel Studios announced the lead of its upcoming Blade reboot and everyone collectively lost their shit with excitement because that person is Mahershala Ali.Read more...

Heeeeeeeeyyy sooooo ... not being able to find any tissue earlier this year really bummed me out. Shit suddenly hit the fan with the pandemic and people absolutely lost it. And by it, I mean their shit—so much so that they bought up toilet paper by the buttload.

White supremacists are America’s greatest terror threat. The Department of Homeland Security has said as much, and the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division has also admitted it. But this year, the FBI is late in fulfilling its legal obligation to release a report detailing the extent of white supremacist terrorism and…Read more...

Another week of football is officially in the books. Let’s get to it.Read more...

Less than a week ago, Tafara Williams saw her boyfriend and the father of her infant child shot dead in front of her. Williams, 20, was in the driver’s seat of a car, while her boyfriend, Marcellis Stinnette, 19, was seated in the passenger seat next to her. Shot by a suburban Chicago police officer on Tuesday,…Read more...

When first hearing about Kate Rubins, the NASA astronaut who’s currently in a space station 200 miles above Earth but was able to vote last week, I was excitedly curious about the process. Did NASA create a hologram Kate to enter a booth and cast a vote? Did a bewinged USPS truck travel to space to pick up and deliver…Read more...

Have you ever wondered what a Black version of Misery (the 1990 classic starring James Caan and Kathy Bates) would be like? Well...enter Spell, directed by Mark Tonderai (House at the End of the Street).Read more...

Unless Seattle Seahawks wide receiver D.K. Metcalf can run down judge Amy Coney Barrett and tackle her before she takes her seat on the Supreme Court, this is a done deal and the fate we all knew was coming has come.

I’m just going to say it: White people stay failing at Halloween.Read more...

For many child stars, their transition into adulthood is rife with financial struggles, diminishing roles and a myriad of other problems that far too often make headlines for all the wrong reasons. So revisiting the origins of that strife can be a painful experience that oftentimes they have no desire to revisit.Read more...

When it comes to handing out our annual accolades, we consider ourselves a pretty discerning bunch here at The Root; with so much Black excellence in the ether, we have to be. So, the fact that Kimberly Drew—also known to hundreds of thousands of her online followers by her “Museum Mammy” tag—has been honored as a…Read more...

It looks like Michael B. Jordan may be following in the helming footsteps of his predecessor, Sylvester Stallone, for Creed 3. Stallone not only starred as the titular character of his 1976 film Rocky but ended up directing its sequels, Rocky II, Rocky III, and Rocky IV.Read more...

The opening lines of one of Lucille Clifton’s best-known poems read: “Won’t you celebrate with me, what I have shaped into a kind of life? I had no model.”Read more...