Clapback/Mailbag

This week’s Clapback Mailbag is about strawmen. When people try to disprove a reasonable argument by distorting the premise of the debate, there’s always a leap in logic that you might not notice unless you examine it closely. For instance, people who refute “black lives matter” with “but what about black-on-black crime” always forget to…

Nigga, I ain’t shitI just know how to rhyme a lil’ bitI’m just trying to squeeze fit my fat ass in wherever I can fit. — Cee-Lo Green Ninety-nine percent of the time, I already know what I’m going to say before I even begin to write the Clapback Mailbag. Today is the other one…

Thanks, Caucasians! This week’s mailbag was mostly filled with white people offering advice to black people on how to protest, how to respond to white supremacy and how to think in general. Although the unbelievable depth of white people’s brazenry knows no bounds, it’s always enlightening to learn about dealing with oppression from people who…

I’m not religious, and I know that thunder and lightning are caused by electrostatic charges superheating the air, producing a rapid atmospheric expansion that causes a sonic boom. I don’t think my hallucinations during REM sleep give me information about fertility, nor do I believe stop signs and telephone poles determine my future. I’ve done…

“If a white person said that…” “What about…” “The Bible says…” Those three introductory phrases are staples in the language used by trolls. But, while some people immediately tune out everything that follows, we at The Root have an obligation to respond to these false equivalencies. We even built a system for it. All during…

I want to be wrong. Every week, when the staff at The Root begins scouring our various inboxes for the weekly clapback mailbag, I keep hoping that one of us will discover an email, tweet, DM or comments from someone who can articulately explain why racism is dead. Just once, I’d love to hear someone…

If you are a regular reader of The Root (or any of the G/O Media sites), then you might be familiar with the ghetto section of our sites that we term “The Grays.” The Grays is the area containing comments that are “pending approval” and appear as grayed out, unlike the good, white comments. I…