The Root

Heading into the 2019-20 NBA season, there were plenty of questions about New Orleans Pelicans star Brandon Ingram. Could he stay healthy? Could all that tantalizing potential finally translate into consistent play? Was he worth a max contract?Read more...

Editor Daniel Thompson wasn’t covering the Saturday rally for Jacob Blake but attended it anyway. The 30-year-old digital editor of the Kenosha News watched as speaker after speaker took the stage: among them were Jacob Blake’s uncle, Justine Blake, Wisconsin Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes, Rep. Gwen Moore, local…Read more...

The year 2020 has flipped and turned our lives upside down—specifically, our sense of time. How do I know this? Well, the general shock of “OMG we’re getting old!” that accompanies a story about a nostalgic piece of art, event, or famous person has been exacerbated.Read more...

Like many corporations as of late, McDonald’s doesn’t have a problem saying the words “Black Lives Matter,” but voicing support for a movement that’s currently more popular than it ever has been is easy. The real question is whether or not the fast-food giant is practicing what it preaches when it comes to the fight…Read more...

If your End Times Apocalypse Bingo Card had the revolution starting in Wisconsin, congratulations, you might be in the running for the grand prize of an FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine. (Spoiler alert: It’s just a 2 percent solution of Clorox, McDonald’s Sprite and Sen. Jim Jordan’s armpit sweat.)Read more...

If you watched Episode 3 of HBO’s Lovecraft Country, you already know: This was a damn near perfect episode. I sincerely believe that the horror genre is where Black folks get to tell truths that otherwise aren’t safe to tell. Horror is an imaginative space for us because so much of our history and experiences in…Read more...

It happened, y’all. Brandy and Monica congregated at Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta and went hit-for-hit in the highly popular nostalgic music event we now know as Verzuz. Miracles happen every day!Read more...

Kids are a lot of work.Read more...

The bullet in my right bicep always aches. It reminds me how everything about me is fair game: who I love, how I dress—indeed, my very body is up for judgment and assault from all quarters, everywhere, all the time. In 2004, I was idling in the driveway of my friend’s apartment building when a skinny kid appeared out…Read more...

A New Jersey mayor has rescinded a bill he sent to an 18-year-old activist for $2,500 in alleged police overtime charges after she organized a fair housing protest earlier this summer.Read more...

As we continue to demand justice for Breonna Taylor, new information regarding the raid on her home and the subsequent investigation continues to surface. It was recently revealed that the drug suspect officers were looking for when they raided Taylor’s home and fatally shot her, was offered a plea deal last month to…Read more...

NASCAR decided not to join the NBA, WNBA and other professional sports leagues in postponing scheduled games in protest over the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Bubba Wallace, the only Black driver in NASCAR’s Cup series, defended the organization’s decision to resume races on schedule, saying essentially that NASCAR…Read more...

This September, the Vogue franchise has organized around a single message: Hope, with each global iteration of the famed fashion magazine publishing its own version of what the theme means to its team. To that end, American Vogue enlisted acclaimed painters Kerry James Marshall and Jordan Casteel to create its…Read more...

It looks like we have a big update—as big as the mouth for Netflix’s Big Mouth!Read more...

Racist white people hate being called racist white people.Read more...

You know, as a rule, I tend not to curse a lot in my posts here at The Root, despite having free rein to do so, as do all of our staff. That’s mainly because I like to consider myself something of a lady—and, as the editor of all things lifestyle here at the site, tend not to find profanity terribly necessary. Also,…Read more...

Though short-lived, the Milwaukee Bucks’ wildcat strike last week has recalibrated many people’s expectations of what is possible when it comes to professional athletes speaking out on social justice issues. Over the last week, teams from various professional sports leagues, including the NFL and MLB, canceled…Read more...

As a nod to the standards of white mainstream journalism, this story is reported in the language used to report crimes involving Black suspects, “officer-involved” shootings and protests against racial injustice.Read more...

Imagine that moment when Mariah Carey raises that single finger to check her pitch while singing—now, add 29 more fingers to it. That’s how many years it’s been since the iconic singer released her debut album. Yes, 30! Wow, time flies.Read more...

It’s about time we have a serious discussion about one particular wypipo proverb: “If they can say it, why can’t I?”Read more...

I don’t know who is running Herman Cain’s account but if it is Herman Cain’s ghost I’m going to need him to go after the Republicans who didn’t even bother to mention his name during the Republican National Convention. It’s almost as if Cain never really left since Republicans didn’t seem to give a shit and he’s still…Read more...

It seemed like a “normal” Friday night—or as normal as any day could be in 2020—and all of a sudden, the world was met with a crushing blow. A universal, downcast silence seemed to fall as we watched our smartphones in sheer disbelief and the realization crept into our consciousness: Chadwick Boseman was gone.Read more...

In the aftermath of Hurricane Laura, hundreds of thousands of people across the state of Louisiana are still without power or water. But those seeking shelter—either because they lack access to important resources or because they have no home to return to—will not find it in Lafayette, according to city officials.Read more...

I keep coming back to resilience. And how I hate how we consider it to be an essential and inherent and invaluable characteristic of Blackness. I hate it because it’s dehumanizing. Being born Black don’t make us any more resilient than anyone else. We ain’t stronger. We ain’t tougher. We’ve just been given more shit…Read more...

The president of American terrorists is doing that thing in which he celebrates violence against American protesters.

Adele is a multi-Grammy award-winning singer whose soulful song stylings have made her a fairly universal fave (we still think that the 2017 Best Album of the Year Grammy belonged to Lemonade, though—and seemingly, so did she. She’s a Beyoncé stan, too!). She also seems to be an affable, humble and entirely relatable…Read more...

Anti-Blackness is a special brand of racism. It seems like everywhere in the world where Black people exist, non-Black people perceive us as a threat and will weaponize their irrational fear of us without hesitation. Non-white people of color are not immune to this behavior.Read more...

The family of Layleen Polanco, a trans-Afro-Latina who died while in solitary confinement at Rikers Island jail last year, will receive a historic $5.9 million settlement—the largest New York City has ever paid out for a death in one of its city jails.

A Razer gaming accessories Gold Box, a $54 mini projector, a Nintendo Switch copy of Assassin’s Creed: The Rebel Collection, a Gooloo 2000A jump starter, a WFH (Wine for Home) bundle, a KN95 mask 40-pack, and a month-long Ulta sale lead Monday’s best deals.Read more...

It’s time for yet another awards ceremony with a virtual stage! This time, it’s MTV’s biggest night for music—the Video Music Awards (VMAs)!Read more...

Friends and family of Hall of Famer John Thompson, the architect of the Georgetown Hoyas’ gilded age, say the legendary coach has died, reports WJLA TV.Read more...

A racist sheriff has resigned at the demand of his colleagues and community members in Arkansas County, after a recording of him dropping the n-word over and over again started making its rounds on Facebook.

Y’all I am convinced there are demons walking around us.

An even better deal on PlayStation Plus, a whole lot of hand sanitizer, an extra large mouse pad, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, and more are Sunday’s best deals.

Violent confrontations between people protesting for racial justice and people who find the very concept offensive have been happening on the streets of Portland, Oregon—a hotbed of white supremacy—for most of the summer.

Advice from former President Barack Obama helped NBA athletes make their recent decision to return to the playoffs, alongside a suite of social justice initiatives from the organization, days after the Milwaukee Bucks launched an impromptu strike in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

Sports has become one of the most viable avenues to force a spotlight on racial injustice, not least because so many of the most popular ones are dominated by Black men.

A bundle of masks for kids, $15 bluetooth earbuds, an always useful generator, God of War for under $15, and more are Saturday’s best deals.

Chadwick Boseman, the award-winning leading man who portrayed inspiring Black figures in movies like Marshall, 42, Get On Up, and the culture shifting Black Panther, has died from colon cancer at 43 years old.

A group of lawmakers in Elizabeth, N.J., authorized plans to build a monument to transgender civil rights activist Marsha P. Johnson. According to Union County officials, this would make Johnson the first transgender person in the country to be honored with a monument.Read more...

On Tuesday, Twitter removed two fake accounts that spammed tweets about Black people leaving the Democratic Party.Read more...

On August 25, 2017, The Root changed the world when it began a feature called the Clapback Mailbag.Read more...

In the aftermath of the police shooting of Jacob Blake, all eyes are on top law enforcement in Kenosha, Wis., as organizers and civil liberties groups around the country question the culture of policing that permeates the city. Among the officials under renewed scrutiny is Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth, whose…Read more...

After having to suffer through a week of witnessing Satan’s minions trot out a batch of Black friends, yet another instance of heinous police brutality, the subsequent domestic terrorism at a protest and a major sports strike...it feels like we’re living in a nightmarish dystopian movie. But, we’re not...I’m sorry to…Read more...

It’s official: the NBA playoffs will resume on Saturday.Read more...

There was a time in the not-too-distant past that seeing women in GQ was simply a signifier of who cis-hetero, mostly white men had deemed the “sexiest women alive.” It was a ranking that proved problematic—particularly when it occasionally zeroed in on race and age—and unsurprisingly, has seemed to fade away in…Read more...

Social media is a graveyard for common sense.

It finally dawned on me yesterday, after reading that Van Jones said Jared Kushner has “the dopest job in the world.” Which is such a Van Jones-ass thing to do and say—and not just because he’s praising the effete criminal dickwad who’s what would happen if every Jared ever and every 28-year-old MBA ever were melted…Read more...

Heads up—if you hadn’t heard, our tresses are trending this month. A number of famous and brilliant women have put their heads together to discuss one of the most specific and polarizing aspects of Black beauty—our hair.Read more...

If there won’t be peace, then let there be a lesson in the destruction of Black bodies. Let the funerals of those unarmed Black bodies killed by police resonate on a frequency so high that it breaks through white silence, shakes the rafters of white supremacy, and seeps into the consciousness of America. Let the…Read more...