The Root

On this week’s episode of “Books in Blackface,” the book retailer Barnes & Noble decided to “suspend” its controversial Diverse Editions series that was supposed to launch Wednesday in Honor of Black History Month.

Have you ever wondered what the black version of Goop’s infamous (but nevertheless sold-out) “This Smells Like My Vagina” candle would be? No? Well, too bad for you, because the artistic and ethereal entity known as Erykah Badu is making her own entry into the growing market of undercarriage-inspired scents. In a…Read more...

Chrystul Kizer, a 19-year-old who stands accused of killing her alleged sex trafficker in Wisconsin, will no longer need to post a $1 million bail in order to see her mother again.Read more...

Hours after revelations that a half-dozen women of color had fled Elizabeth Warren’s campaign in Nevada—and just over two weeks before that state’s critical Democratic caucuses—the senator from Massachusetts issued an apology on Thursday night, acknowledging the staffers’ “bad experience.”Read more...

While most 11-year-old boys are begging their parents for toys and new shoes, 11-year-old Obocho Peters is earning cash with his mom and helping other families save for college in the process. Obocho and his mom, Sasha Peters, run Obocho’s Closet, a thrift store in NYC stocked with affordable clothes and shoes for…Read more...

What would you do if men in regular clothes showed up on your doorstep with no identification, no warrant, no badges and attempted to take your mother’s boyfriend away from the house?Read more...

A Tennessee instructor’s Black History Month lesson on a fake historical document backfired when school administrators discovered that she was teaching “alternative facts” instead of verifiable ones like Christopher Columbus discovering America, states’ rights causing the Civil War, or “liberty and justice for all.”

Aukey Power Charger | $19 | Amazon | CouponRead more...

It was another ritualistic dragging on social media this week, as Black Twitter read Gayle King for filth for daring to ask WNBA veteran Lisa Leslie about the darker side of Kobe Bryant’s legacy (his 2003 sexual assault charge, which was subsequently dismissed and settled out of court) during an interview on CBS This…Read more...

It’s 2020 and this awards season is looking real white. What happened to all of those “diversity” initiatives, you say? Enter attorney April Reign.Read more...

1. Because it’s stupid and silly.Read more...

Today is the day my mother’s body expired because it could no longer take the demands of dialysis to manage the serial killer so many black families face—that literal motherfucker diabetes. She left this earth Feb. 7, 2018, and in every moment since, my life has been a series of disbelief, denial, and levels of grief…Read more...

It was only last month that Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) revealed her alopecia diagnosis here at The Glow Up, and just last week when she proudly stood on the floor of the House of Representatives with her bald head on display for the first time. For a rising political figure who was already a force in our eyes,…Read more...

On Wednesday, Jan. 22, the world lost a phenomenal creative mind. Legendary British makeup artist Vanessa Evelyn Watt succumbed to a battle with cancer. She was 55.

My fellow Americans,Read more...

I’m one of those people who gets hung up on the little things in movies and television shows. Like, I’ll be sitting in a movie theater minding my business watching some varying level of black cinematic excellence set in 1980-whenever, and an era-specific song will come on to really give you a sense of time, and I’ll…Read more...

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It’s crazy, y’all. I feel like four years ago we warned that if ol’ boy got elected it would embolden the worst of our society to do some heinous things. According to the FBI, unfortunately, we were right.Read more...

Each week it feels like yet another story comes out about a prisoner being killed in a Mississippi prison. Hopefully,tonight’s news means that meaningful change is on the way.

It was hard enough to be a black in America at the height of the civil rights movement. To also be a gay at the time only furthered that hardship. Civil Rights leader Bayard Rustin was unfortunately a victim of laws put in place to punish those in the LGBTQ community. While much delayed, he has finally received some…Read more...

Real talk? While I’m a longtime lover of Olay, it’s not a brand I automatically associate with the younger set. My Gen-X self inherited a love for the brand (then more commonly known as Oil of Olay) from my mother, who was taught by her mother and...well, you get it. But while it’s an enduring and much-beloved legacy…Read more...

Nearly two weeks after the fatal helicopter crash that took the lives of basketball legend Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven others, details are beginning to emerge about plans for the public memorial the city of Los Angeles will host in his honor.Read more...

FOX 24 Charleston, you done fucked up.Read more...

“I put you on how to dress,” OG Anunoby told fellow Toronto Raptor and avowed fashion-lover Serge Ibaka in a recent episode of Canadian retailer Holt Renfrew’s Avec Classe—a fashion web series hosted by Ibaka.

For students across the country, it’s the most anxiety-inducing time of the year: college admissions season. But in Lynwood Unified School District in Southern California, an “HBCU caravan” recently gifted students at two high schools with instant acceptance letters and affirmations.Read more...

Here at The Root, we keep trying to warn white folks that freedom of speech doesn’t equate to freedom from consequences; but be it an ass-whooping, a vicious Twitter dragging, or a one-way trip to the unemployment line, they remain resolute on jeopardizing their quality of life—and occasionally their jaw.Read more...

It’s at these times when I find it best to quote Grecian philosopher Joseph Guillermo Jones II, colloquially known as Jim Jones, from his epic meter, which I’m paraphrasing, but it goes something like:

If America’s election were a music video, then Russia would be 1995 Puffy.

Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat (Breath, Eyes, Memory; The Farming of Bones; Brother, I’m Dying, etc.) has long been considered one of the most gifted voices in the diaspora, garnering a National Book Critics Circle Award, an American Book Award, and a MacArthur Genius grant, among her many honors. This week,…Read more...

We all knew that the impeachment acquittal of President Donald Trump was going to make him even more impossible to tolerate, and in his first public appearance since convincing Republicans that they better stay the course, Trump didn’t disappoint.

So, you and your partner have oh-so-casually chatted about using a sex toy together, and now, with Valentine’s Day looming, you’re ready to take the leap. Exciting! But also...well, maybe you’re not quite sure where to start?Read more...

A Huckberry shirt jacket sale, a Tacklife snowblower, and the Batman Funko Pop lead off Thursday’s best deals from around the web.

First off, Iowa is white as hell. Secondly, I don’t even know why Iowa matters but it does and it’s the first election of the presidential primary season, so the numbers matter, but I’m getting a little tired of Iowa being a thing when the Democratic Party is owned by black women. So please stop trying to Terry Crews …Read more...

There’s an eerie similarity between the NBA trade deadline, which arrives at 3pm EST on Thursday, and the annual tradition known as Cuffing Season.Read more...

Gayle King became the target of intense and widespread backlash this week after her interview with former WNBA star Lisa Leslie went viral. The subject: Kobe Bryant and his legacy.Read more...

It’s been a day, y’all. I’m thinking we should wind the night up with some lighter news. Sound good to y’all? Cool.Read more...

I don’t really understand the world we live in sometimes. Okay, most of the time. For example, why do the police not understand why we have a distaste for them when they turn around and do things like this?Read more...

For some inexplicable reason, Friends has seen a resurgence in the last five years. This was mainly due to it being easily accessible on Netflix until recently. I don’t get it, but hey, I’m not white. As a result of this resurgence, it seems like every week a former Friends star is asked about a reboot of the show.Read more...

Dear Trayvon,Read more...

Well, the thing we all knew was going to happen has happened. Having said that, it isn’t any less disappointing.Read more...

“When I spoke out about Prada’s blackface line one year ago, I feared that racism in fashion was a just bitter pill we collectively had to swallow,” said Chinyere Ezie, a civil rights attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, on Wednesday. “Now I know that speaking truth to power can lead to meaningful…Read more...

1. Wait, there are levels of ash? Yup!Read more...

The vote is today and we all have known for weeks, if not months, that the vote is going to go to Team Evil. The Senate will vote on whether to remove President Donald Trump for attempting to bully Ukraine into declaring that they would open an investigation into Trump’s political rival, Joe Biden and his son Hunter,…Read more...

I always knew Mrs. Bookman was wrong.Read more...

The State of the Union under the Trump administration has become a congressional version of the mythical Hater’s Ball. Everyone goes but everyone hates everybody. It’s basically a sorority step show without the stepping. There is more shade being thrown here than all of the Housewives series combined.Read more...

In the immortal words of André 3000, sometimes “roses really smell like boo-boo”—and, such is the case of Victoria Fuller, one of the 30 women vying for roses on this season of ABC’s long-running franchise The Bachelor. Fuller (not to be confused with the former Playmate of the same name) is a 26-year-old medical…Read more...

Today is Trayvon Martin’s 25th birthday.Read more...

For years, Tavis Smiley, the former PBS late-night talk show host, has been defiant in the face of sexual misconduct allegations.Read more...

When some people think of Valentine’s Day, they think of the word “love.” I, on the other hand, think of the word “over.” As in: overbooked restaurants, over-hyped specials, over-the-top gestures — over it. Frankly, I’m of the mind that a bottle of good wine and a bag of sour cream and onion chips (I will settle for…Read more...

Over the weekend, multi-hyphenate Jay-Z drew the ire of Wendy Williams, exiled quarterback Colin Kaepernick, and pretty much the rest of the free world when he and Beyoncé decided to remain seated during the Super Bowl’s national anthem.Read more...