Opinion
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The Root's Clapback Mailbag: The Caucasian Virus
In light of this global pandemic, we’ve decided to come forward and admit that our claim that we respond to our readers’ correspondences each Friday may not be 100 percent accurate. After carefully contemplating this issue, we must admit that we have led you to believe a lie. For the sake of transparency, you should…
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Coronavirus Has Exposed America's Sickness of Selfishness
When I was a little girl growing up in Jamaica, my schoolteachers frequently recited the phrase: “No man is an island, no man stands alone.” The saying effectively transmitted to me and my peers’ childhood minds the message that we’re all in this together and that as humans, we need each other to survive, even…
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The Root's Clapback Mailbag: Flashback to the Future
Each week, as I read the emails, tweets, DMs and comments for Friday’s Clapback Mailbag, I find something that makes me think: “This person is gonna look really stupid in the flashback.” Wait, you don’t think about your future flashbacks? I live my life as if I were a hero in a movie. In every…
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You're Working From Home, Stressed, and Want to Defeat the Coronavirus? Masturbate!
In just the past 24 hours, the NBA suspended its season, the NCAA suspended most conference tournaments (and, by the time you read this, might have already postponed the NCAA tournament), countless schools and universities have shuttered their campuses, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson revealed that they have the coronavirus, and we were collectively reminded,…
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Donald Trump Will NOT Catch the Coronavirus, So Don't Pray For It to Happen or Try to Speak It Into Existence
I’m not quite sure when exactly it happened, but at some point in the past week my coronavirus-related anxiety shifted from “this is a thing I should think about, I guess” to “this is a thing I should actively worry about.” Even if we’re able to effectively contain the spread of it, it now seems…
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The Root's Clapback Mailbag: Black-on-Black Clapback
Y’all won. Every week, as I prepare for the Mailbag, there’s always at least one very angry white person asking why I blame racists instead of calling out my own people. So this week, I decided to do that. This week, I decided to highlight anti-black black people who are so enamored with whiteness that…
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Space Is the Place: Nona Hendryx Takes NYC Out of This World With the Disciples of Sun Ra
When I was a child watching reruns of Star Trek, one of the things I always wondered was … where did all the black people go? Sure, there was actress Nichelle Nichols’ Uhura and she was amazing. And later, on series like Star Trek: Next Generation there was Geordi La Forge and, even later, Benjamin…
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The Root's Clapback Mailbag: Our Formal Endorsement for President of White America
The Root hates Bernie Sanders. The Root loves Bernie Sanders. Neither one of those things is true but, depending on which candidate you support, you either think The Root is actively trying to sabotage your candidate by painting them as a racist or we are selling out for Joe Biden. Or maybe it’s Elizabeth Warren.…