Where Are They Now?
Where Are They Now?
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The Root 100 No. 1s: BeyoncĂ© Will Forever Be Bey-ond. Sheâs So Fly, They Named a Fly After Her
What can be said about Queen Bey that hasnât already been said, done, sung, texted, tweeted, explicated, unpacked, imagined? In an age when there are very few true superstars, she stands alone; one of a few black women, one of a few of her generation. Who else but a few aging rock stars is able…
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The Root 100 No. 1s: Shonda Rhimes Changes the Face of Television Forever
The pop-cultural impact of Shonda Rhimes cannot be overstated, although at this point, itâs hard to imagine TV without her forceful, casually diverse, complicated and occasionally ruthless characters who fall outside of what was heretofore the ânormâ (read: white, heterosexual male protagonists and their stories). In fact, one could argue that the writer, producer and…
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The Root 100 No. 1s: Ta-Nehisi Coates Wanted to Be âthe Baddest Motherfucking Writer on the Planetâ
It is a rare piece of long-form journalism that breaks the internet. But thatâs exactly what happened when Ta-Nehisi Coatesâ keen, decisive reportage, âThe Case for Reparations,â dropped in June 2014, compelling the editors at The Root to give him that yearâs No. 1 spot. Part of his The Root 100 bio read: Two years…
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The Root 100 No. 1s: Ben Jealous, a Supreme Builder of Bridges Over Left and Right
Benjamin Todd Jealous first made a national name for himself in 2008 when, at age 35, he became the youngest leader of one of Americaâs oldest and most esteemed civil rights bodies, the NAACP. Before Jealous began his five-year tenure of the then-99-year-old organization, it was clear that the NAACP had calcified into a shell…
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The Root 100 No. 1s: Melissa Harris-Perry Lets the World Know She Is Not Your Mammy
The indomitable Melissa Harris-Perry, once the voice of the weekends through her two-hour show on MSNBCâat once ritual before brunch or church or work and a much-needed respite from the unceasing whiteness of political punditryâgave us #Nerdland, that delicious slice of TV that wasnât white-centered, wasnât male-centered and was here for all the blerds who…