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  • The Crime This Time: Partying While Black and Successful

    “That’s a nice dress,” the officer said as I stood frozen while she snapped my picture. I thanked her without smiling as she led me to the bright cell with cornflower-colored bars where I would stay until I was summoned once more to be fingerprinted. I wondered how the woman in the cell across from…

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    Danielle C. Belton

    Published

  • The Root Goes to the Least Exciting White House Correspondents' Dinner Ever

    Every year for the last nine years The Root usually gets lucky and gets one or two tickets (but usually just one) to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. During the Obama years this celebration of Washington’s nerdiest journalism nerds turned into a celebrity super bowl of sorts, a place where you could embarrass yourself in…

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    Danielle C. Belton

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  • Does a Black Face in a White Place Count as Progress at the University of Ala.?

    When is progress actual progress and when is it an act of tokenism? That’s the question some have pondered since the election of Jared Hunter as student president at the University of Alabama. While many praised his victory as a symbol of progress—the 21-year-old junior being only the third black student to win the student…

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    Danielle C. Belton

    Published

  • As #EbonyOwes Trends, Writers Wonder if Ebony Magazine Will Ever Pay Up

    Ebony magazine is a legend, a legacy brand that many grew up reading. It’s respected, it’s loved. But unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be paying its writers, and Ebony’s current owners appear to have one view (that everyone will be paid) that goes contrary to reality (people waiting months, even years, for payment). When the…

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    Danielle C. Belton

    Published

  • ‘But I’m Here to Tell You, There’s Something Else’ … Prince Week at The Root

    ‘But I’m Here to Tell You, There’s Something Else’ … Prince Week at The Root

    Man, 2016 really took a weird turn after Prince died. Russians invading our elections. Wave after wave of surprising deaths. The ascension of Donald Trump against all the best logic and reason. So much happened, it made you wonder if the only thing holding the fabric of the universe together was a petite man with…

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    Danielle C. Belton

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  • The Root’s Divine 9 Members Watched Burning Sands and We Have Some Thoughts

    If Netflix’s Burning Sands were about drug addiction instead of hazing, would people be talking about it? (Seriously, the main character smells, has all sorts of mysterious injuries, and starts falling off in his schoolwork and personal life, destroying his relationships … pledging a frat that hazes is just like taking up a crack habit!)…

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    Danielle C. Belton

    Published

  • The Women of The Root Are on Strike Today

    Abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth is famously attributed with asking, “Ain’t I a woman?” Her extemporaneous speech about the nature of womanhood was edited, adjusted and remixed to fit the sensibilities of the white progressives of the time, i.e., abolitionists and suffragettes. Meaning, while Truth was from the Northeast and spoke Dutch as…

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    Danielle C. Belton

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  • At the AAFCA Awards, Black Artists of TV and Film Invest in One Another

    You can’t call it a comeback because we’ve never been here before. To paraphrase actor Omar Dorsey, aka “Hollywood” from the TV show Queen Sugar, at Wednesday night’s African American Film Critics Association Awards, you can’t call it a rebirth because this is something in its infancy. We’ve only just begun. What Dorsey was referring…

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    Danielle C. Belton

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  • Tracing Your Roots: Was My Black Kin’s Land a Gift from a White Man?

    Dear Professor Gates: My paternal great-grandfather, Joe P. Daniels, and his mother, my great-great-grandmother Matilda Jackson, settled in a small community called New Hope in Kilgore, Texas, by way of North Carolina. The story goes that one of the main contributors of this community was an Army officer named John Holt. He fell for Matilda…

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    Danielle C. Belton

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  • Please Allow Us to Reintroduce Ourselves

    Hello. We’re The Root. Once a gleam in a noted professor’s eye, nurtured and carefully tended to by a tireless warrior woman and a bevy of brilliant bosses, we have been through the fire and walk among you the unburnt, First of Our Names, Blog of Unapologetic Blackness, Snatcher of Wigs, Bane of Bigots, #TeamRoot,…

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    Danielle C. Belton

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Danielle C. Belton