The Root

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Jada Pinkett Smith’s Facebook Watch series Red Table Talk had a very important discussion about gun violence and the trauma it places on the women who lose the special men in their lives to it. The episode aired on the social media site Tuesday.

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In the week that has passed since Tony McDade’s killing at the hands of a Tallahassee police officer, everything and nothing has changed.Read more...

On Wednesday evening, Barack Obama sought to give the sort of public address that Donald Trump has thus far failed to give: validating the concerns of protesters and offering them encouragement—while offering, controversially, an olive branch to law enforcement.Read more...

The past week has seen people all over the country protest against police violence after video was released showing George Floyd death as the result of Minneapolis Police officers placing their knee on his neck, suffocating him. Now, an officer in Sarasota, Fl. are under investigation for using a similar tactic.

Frank Rizzo was a truly awful human being. As police commissioner and later mayor of Philadelphia through the ’70s, he spent his time in power terrorizing black and LGBTQ communities. Despite this information being common knowledge, a statue erected in his honor stood in front of city hall for more than two decades.

The Drug Enforcement Administration is supposed to be exactly what it sounds like—an agency tasked with combatting drug trafficking and distribution in the United States. Since the department was formed in 1973, enforcing federal drug laws has been its one job...until Sunday. Over the weekend, the DEA was grated…Read more...

Emma Amos may not have enjoyed the same level of name recognition of some of her contemporaries in the art world; but as an artist addressing sexism and racism in her work years before the term “intersectionality “ was coined, she was a pivotal figure in what she called “a man’s scene, black or white.” A member of the…Read more...

*Cue Star Wars theme* A short time ago in a country far, far away, John Boyega once again proved that he’s about that life—black life, to be specific.Read more...

Compared to most cities its size, Birmingham, Ala., didn’t really have a police brutality problem. While extrajudicial killings are always a problem, Birmingham sat near the bottom of the spectrum for American cities with 4.7 police killings per 100,000 citizens, according to Mapping Police Violence. And curiously, as…Read more...

Outside of the social media initiative Blackout Tuesday, which encouraged internet folks to post a black square to show their solidarity with the black community and then continue to work to end racial injustice, June 2 was an election day in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Indiana, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Iowa, Montana,…Read more...

We have to admit—#BlackOutTuesday didn’t go the way its originators intended. Though we tried to alleviate a bit of confusion with a quick explainer that morning, some of the spiraling was unavoidable and unfortunately, the intended message was lost in the muddled mess.Read more...

Outrage against police brutality has spread across the country in the week following George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. On Friday, Derek Chauvin, the fired officer seen with his knee on Floyd’s neck, was arrested and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.

If Twitter and Snapchat are Jalen Rose, Facebook is Jason Whitlock.

Every black family has to have “the talk” at some point. Lord knows the opportunity keeps presenting itself and most of us never quite know how to approach it with our children or relatives.Read more...

There’s a reason the New York Knicks spend every season swirling around the toilet bowl and it begins and ends with their owner, James Dolan. Yes, the same James Dolan who penned an uninspired tune about Trayvon Martin being murdered while having “nothing in his pockets but candy and a pop”; the same James Dolan who …Read more...

For days, President Trump has been threatening to use military force to stop peaceful protesting in the name of George Floyd, whose life was taken by Minneapolis police while in their custody.

Though the primary purpose of films is to entertain, it can also be used to make a statement and inform the masses on important issues throughout history.Read more...

This video perfectly reflects black cool...and I love it.Read more...

As we reflect on the impact of the past week’s protests and #BlackoutTuesday, it might be considered as much a social experiment as a social justice movement. While prompted by black women in the music industry, scores of individuals and other industries quickly followed suit, prompting many a side-eye as some who’d…Read more...

Actor Don Cheadle appeared on NBC News and NBCBLK’s Can You Hear Us Now? broadcast, a special dedicated to spurring conversations about race in America and what we can do to enact progress. The broadcast, hosted by MSNBC’s Trymaine Lee, also featured New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, co-founder of…Read more...

On August 9, it will have been six years since Mike Brown’s death. Some six years ago, Ferguson, Mo. became front-page news when white officer Darren Wilson shot and killed an 18-year-old unarmed teen. The stories would be conflicting, the narrative would be familiar and the nation was forced to pick a side. Black…Read more...

Nationwide protests prompted by the death of George Floyd continued Tuesday night and were mostly peaceful even as protesters defied curfews that were meant to curtail the looting and vandalism that occurred during the night this past week.Read more...

Let me start by saying that I neither encourage nor condone violence towards anybody (who doesn’t deserve it), especially unsuspecting individuals who are just doing their job. Taking aim at a journalist for doing nothing more than (presumably) being present when you feel like firing off a projectile isn’t only not…Read more...

Steve King, the longtime member of the “I don’t understand how saying that whites are God’s favorite people is racist,” just had a house fall on him, but luckily, his shoes are just fine. The wicked witch of racism and a nine-term Republican congressman lost his primary to Republican state Sen. Randy Feenstra.

In a recent Zoom conversation titled, WW Presents: Your Life in Focus: A Vision Forward, Oprah and longtime friend Gayle King discussed the past weekend’s protests, which popped off following the police killing of George Floyd. (By the way 50 Cent, here’s some of the easily Google-able information you could’ve come…Read more...

Say what you will about civil unrest, sometimes it yields results.Read more...

Multihyphenate Keke Palmer attended a Black Lives Matter protest in Hollywood on Tuesday, where she was recorded speaking calmly to a National Guardsman instructed to keep the peace.

In January, some of the biggest stars in music descended upon the Atlanta History Center to pay homage to the 30-year legacy of LaFace Records and its co-founders, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds and Antonio “L.A.” Reid. This black-tie affair, dubbed YouTube Music’s 2020 Leaders & Legends Ball, featured familiar names such…Read more...

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TikTok, the popular video creation app, apologized for a controversy over the weekend involving the Black Lives Matter movement and those who aim to spread awareness about the senseless murder of George Floyd.

Black trans people have long stood at the intersection of racist violence and gender violence. In the last month, Nina Pop, a black trans woman killed in early May, and Tony McDade, a black trans man fatally shot by Tallahassee police last week, have become names to rally around, symbolizing the need for specific…Read more...

White supremacists are at home baking cookies while antifa is organizing terror cells. The government is blacking out cell phone signals so you can’t riot. George Soros is paying negro crisis actors. Black people are trying to overthrow the government.

A week ago, Amy Cooper, a.k.a. “Central Park Karen,” went viral for all the wrong reasons after she called the police on a black man, claiming he was threatening her life while video footage showed she was in no danger. Cooper lost her job and her dog following the incident, which has served as a cautionary tale to…Read more...

He hadn’t even been dead a week. George Floyd, crushed under the weight of a Minneapolis police officer, hadn’t even been dead a week before at least one retailer found a way to profit from the pain coursing through America as cities literally burned with a rage simmering for 400 years.Read more...

Black people aren’t stupid.Read more...

Not like this, Nancy Pelosi. Please, not like this.

I tried very, very, very hard today to find a point of #BlackOutTuesday. Not a reason, mind you. There are many of those. It was created by two black women—Jamila Thomas (Senior Director of Marketing at Atlantic Records) and Brianna Agyemang (Senior Artist Campaign Manager at Platoon)—to “pause” the music industry.…Read more...

As we turn to the “celebrity awareness” chapter of this life book we call “Living In The Age Of Da Rona, Protests and More,” the black community (especially on social media) is becoming more aware of the obtusely insensitive ways in which celebrities (and brands) have been attempting to show their support during the…Read more...

When the pilot of HBO’s Watchmen premiered in October 2019, the history of Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre was put on display and at the forefront of a premium cable network in a significant way. For many, it was the first time they had heard of the historically tragic event.Read more...

In a joint statement, the Washington Wizards and the family of Wes Unseld announced his passing on Tuesday. He was 74.

On Monday, The Root reported that 22-year-old James Scurlock was shot and killed by Jake Gardner, the white owner of two bars near the scene of the incident. Gardner was detained but not jailed while investigators looked into the shooting, and now, authorities have determined that it was a case of self-defense and…Read more...

When I think of iconic music videos, several come to mind. Janet Jackson is responsible for several of them. While this series will probably get real loose with the definition of “iconic,” there is no need to qualify it with the video for the title track from Janet’s 1989 game-changing album, Rhythm Nation, officially…Read more...

If you’re protesting, the feds are watching.Read more...

Former Vice President Joe Biden is tired of Trump’s hateful and divisive speech. He’s tired of Trump speaking out of both sides of his mouth, and he, like much of America who doesn’t believe that McDonald’s is a sustainable and healthy diet, is just tired of watching Trump grandstand just to grandstand.

There are a lot of stories circulating about David McAtee, the 53-year-old black man shot and killed while Louisville Metro Police and the National Guard attempted to “disperse” a crowd who had gathered outside a Dino’s Food Mart in the early hours of Monday morning.Read more...

Someone had the bright idea to ask conservative radio shock jock Rush Limbaugh to have a candid conversation with the hosts of Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club—Charlamagne Tha God, Angela Yee and DJ Envy—about racism, white privilege and the Black Lives Matter movement. The nearly 30-minute chat took place on Monday,…Read more...

Nationwide protests calling for the valuing of black lives have filled our news feeds with stories of chaos and civil unrest as rioting and clashes between protesters and law enforcement continue. Now, dozens of cities across the country have imposed curfews and the National Guard has been deployed in over a dozen…Read more...

President Archie Bunker (but more racist and less likable) heard all our jokes about him hiding as police clashed with protesters Sunday night, so what did he do? He did the only respectable thing that a punk-ass president would do: he had peaceful protesters tear-gassed outside the White House so that he could walk…Read more...