The Root

So what did we learn?

It’s been a week in America. After another shooting of a Black person at the hands of police—7 times in the back, no less—everybody reached a new level of over it. Athletes in several of the major sports either postponed, cancelled or walked out of games or contests. It’s the kind of week when the only response is…Read more...

Whatever personal feelings one may hold about vice presidential hopeful Kamala Harris’ history as a prosecutor, attorney general and senator, the vast majority of lawyers, legal scholars and criminal justice experts agree on one inarguable fact:

We will never forget the image of Emmett Louis Till’s grotesquely disfigured face, after his mother Mamie Till Mobley decided to intentionally leave his casket open so the nation could reckon with the hateful evil that caused it. Additionally, we shall never forget the stark pain on her face as she stood over her…Read more...

Fifty-seven years after Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have A Dream,” speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a group of activists have once again gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to advocate for the value of Black lives.

Since 1915, a garish statue honoring Confederate soldiers stood tall on the grounds of Lake Charles’ courthouse. This year, as Black Lives Matter movements inspired people around the world to topple statues honoring racist historical figures, the town appeared to seriously consider taking the statue down, but…Read more...

Dyson TP02 Air Purifier (Refurbished) | $230 | NeweggRead more...

On Thursday night, when the Miami Marlins and New York Mets expressed their intention to play, despite plenty of other MLB teams opting to strike in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake, it raised eyebrows.Read more...

After being shot in the back multiple times by Kenosha police officer Rusten Sheskey, 29-year-old Jacob Blake is paralyzed from the waist down, says his family. Despite Blake’s incapacitation—and his clear need to continue to receive treatment—his father says Blake is currently handcuffed to his hospital bed.Read more...

With a decades-long music career, numerous Grammy nominations, and lauded accomplishments in the film, television, theater, and literature realms, one might imagine Ledisi able to rest on her laurels. However, as she details to The Root over the phone, every endeavor feels brand new, and she will continue to extend…Read more...

Bounce music is the heartbeat of New Orleans.Read more...

I live in Washington, D.C., and much like most of the parents in the area—the whole country, really—my wife and I have looked for mostly outdoor activities to do with our kids since the beginning of the pandemic. Washington, D.C., and its surrounding suburbs, are home to tons of museums and monuments; there’s always…Read more...

August 28 is an important date. 2020 is an important year.Read more...

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A building at Troy University in Alabama, once named after a former governor with ties to the Ku Klux Klan, has been renamed in honor of late congressman John Lewis.Read more...

Regardless of how one feels about the subject of gun laws and regulation, a reasonable person would have to admit that certain proposed pro-Second Amendment policies are just plain reckless. For example, Missouri lawmakers recently advanced a bill that would make it legal for an adult to give a gun to a child so long…Read more...

It appears things have escalated while Robert “R” Kelly continues his stint in jail.Read more...

A residence hall director at Iowa State University made an uncomfortable discovery when he found racial slurs spray painted throughout his residential storage room.Read more...

Earlier this month, a Los Angeles charter school teacher did a simple thing to show solidarity with the movement against systemic racism in policing—she wore a T-shirt that reads “I can’t breathe.” The result? White people lost their damn minds. For the mere acknowledgment that Black lives do in fact matter, this…Read more...

August is over on Monday, Labor Day is around the corner, and the official end of summer is in just a few weeks. I think I speak for everyone when I say...what the hell was this summer? Nevertheless, it’s important to look for the joy in order to make it seem like we did something amidst the daily chaos our country…Read more...

Nearly three months after Bon Appétit cut ties with then-editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport over accusations of racial discrimination—including a stint in brownface—Condé Nast has named a new top editor to run the renowned food publication: Dawn Davis, an influential editor and top executive in the publishing industry.

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We’ve used the hashtag.Read more...

Director Julius Onah had no way of knowing back in 2019 how prescient his adaption of the play Luce would be in 2020—a story of how race and expectations due to one’s race impact one young man’s life.Read more...

The 2020 uprisings have proven that “the revolution” has gone far beyond being televised.Read more...

Podcasts offer listeners something to satisfy their desire for stimulating conversations—and Black podcasts are proving powerful enough to create empires for both their hosts and the companies heading them. However, from time to time, disconnects between the two occur, and unfortunately, supporters of The Joe Budden…Read more...

After refusing to play, and forcing the entire world to focus its attention on Sunday’s police shooting of Jacob Blake instead, NBA players have reversed course and now agree to resume the NBA playoffs.Read more...

The sports world took a historic and deeply significant timeout on Wednesday in support of Black lives and in response to the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis. Among the number of elite athletes and teams staging spontaneous strikes was tennis star Naomi Osaka, who canceled her Thursday semifinals match at the…Read more...

If you ever find yourself walking around downtown Pittsburgh on a Friday afternoon in the early fall—when the weather is still nice enough to be jacket-less—you’d encounter many of the amenities that consistently place it on America’s Most Livable Cities lists. The world-renowned Cultural District. Restaurants helmed…Read more...

It’s a simple equation that becomes more and more urgent by the day: Black women notoriously hold it down in elections, but if Joe Biden is going to emerge triumphant in November, he’s gonna need Black men to show up and show out at the polls—the same way we did for Barak Obama in 2008 and 2012, and didn’t for Hilary…Read more...

I don’t think we ever discussed the similarities between President Trump and boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr.

The prolonged threat of COVID-19 has disrupted many of our regularly scheduled events this year, but fashion waits for no one—and New York Fashion Week (NYFW) will be going on as planned this September 13-16, albeit virtually (which should hopefully make it more accessible to fashion lovers everywhere). The Council of…Read more...

Three days after Kenosha police shot Jacob Blake multiple times in the back in front of his three children, the department finally has its version of events (or, as CNN aptly put it, “their first version”) of the police shooting.Read more...

The creator of Greenleaf has a few more tricks up his sleeves. The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) announced the straight-to-series order of Delilah, a new drama slated to appear on the network in 2021. It is headed by Greenleaf creator Craig Wright, Warner Bros. Television and Winfrey’s Harpo Films. Wright, Charles…Read more...

Words matter.Read more...

In 2012, a young white boy portrayed by another young white boy with a first and last name that can easily be switched gyrated onto the forefront of our screens...and our hearts (OK, loins).Read more...

Despite a week of violent threats from police and armed militias, the residents of Kenosha, Wisc., turned out for a fourth straight night of protests in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man who was shot seven times in the back as he tried to enter his car on Sunday night. He survived…Read more...

Dusk was waning on June 14 when her friends got the news: one of the two bodies police had found the night before had been identified. It was Toyin. A 19-year-old student living in Tallahassee, Oluwatoyin Salau had met the group of activists during the George Floyd protests, a moment when young people across the city…Read more...

Where, exactly, does social media and movement building intersect?

I had no intention of watching the game.Read more...

You know why conservative white America hates the Black Lives Matter movement so much? It’s because the movement undermines business-as-usual America. And by “business,” I mean this nation’s most profitable enterprise: racism and white supremacy. Why else would anyone—especially law enforcement or any media outlet—go…Read more...

Art often imitates life and social justice is a huge part of our lives right now...in fact, at this very moment. Just ask the NBA.Read more...

The Republican National Convention dragged on into day three and pulled America into an alternate universe in which Chick-fil-A is open on Sunday, some 177,000 people have not died from COVID-19 and the world didn’t watch an unarmed Black man get shot seven times at point-blank range in front of his children.

As The Root Institute winds down for its final day, we’re happy to present a panel and film that is more relevant today in 2020 than it was in 2019 when it was first released. Direct Julius Onah’s adaptation of the play Luce, is a story of race, expectations and identity, wrapped up in a suspenseful, thoughtful film…Read more...

When people my age think of the Black Lives Matter uprising, many picture young people taking to the streets and marching for change.

The ensemble cast for HBO’s special adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me just became even larger!Read more...

Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Tom Wolf included marijuana legalization as part of his legislative agenda for the state’s COVID-19 economy recovery plan.Read more...

There are certain figures that, for one reason or another, get seared in your brain.Read more...

Today’s episode of White people are wildin’ takes us to Florida, where a white woman was arrested after slapping a Black child and calling him a racial slur. Why? Well, because their go-karts bumped into each other.