Opinion
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Black in Boston
I’m from Boston. Boston doles out its racist vitriol like paper-cuts. It’s not Confederate flags on mud flaps and SS tattoos (unless you date white girls from New Hampshire), it’s smiling pastors’ wives telling you how scary you look until you smile, days before your 14th birthday, when Rubik’s cubes make more sense than girls,…
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The Root’s Clapback Mailbag: Something New Every Day
I need your help. While browsing through the emails, tweets and DMs for the clapback mailbag, I learn a lot about myself. This week I discovered that I am involved with a lot of extracurricular agendas. Here is the list: The gay agenda The leftist agenda Black Lives Matter terrorists The “real racists” Globalists The…
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Brexit Reporter Declares He’s ‘Never Seen So Many White People in One Place.’ The Lie Detector Determined … That’s a Lie
Earlier in life then we probably realize, black people are taught the value of compartmentalizing our personas. While we take comfort in Wobbling at weddings and selectively blurting out “Ain’t nobody coming to see you, Otis!” around our own, we have a propensity to abandon the seasoning rack while amongst our unseasoned companions. Our speaking…
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How Raising Multiethnic Kids Reshaped My Blackness
My wife is not black. Our daughters, by no choice of their own, are. Not when we’re at home or with friends and family or surrounded by people who know and love them. But when they’re out in the world, with their bronze skin and curly afros, when they’re seen from afar or described by…
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On the Anniversary of MLK Jr.’s Assassination, We Should Heed King’s Economic Roadmap to Reparations
In a 1968 speech just prior to his death on April 4, Martin Luther King Jr. appeared to articulate the next phase of the fight for equality in America. It wasn’t focused on equal rights or the plight of African Americans in education in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education—it focused on black…
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White People Didn't Do This: On Nipsey Hussle and Conspiracy Theories
A few years ago, someone told writer Anna Merlan that I would be a good person to interview for a book she was working on about conspiracy theories. When she informed me that she was going to dedicate a chapter to black conspiracies, I was startled to find out that she had never heard of…
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White-on-White Crime: Trump Supporter Aggressively Heckles News Reporter on Camera at Political Event
When you work in journalism, you come to expect that you are going to encounter your fair amount of trolls as you go about your daily job. They are out there, and they are ready to heckle you at every turn—whether their opinions about what you are reporting on are based in fact or not.…
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To Live and Die in South L.A.
It’s important for people to understand why it’s OK for Nipsey Hussle to be seen as a hero in South Los Angeles. But we have to get a few things straight. Don’t get distracted by the fact that he was a Rollin’ 60s Crip; people join gangs because they seek a sense of community in…
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LOL, America. You Almost Got Me
I gotta hand it to you, America. This extended April Fool’s Day joke has been one of the greatest hijinks of all time. Unlike some people who get pranked, I’m not going to pretend that I knew what was going on all along. I thought it was real. It was so well done that I…
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The Root’s Clapback Mailbag: Undercover Wypipo
When I started today’s mailbag, the intro was going to be this really funny bit about how, for far too long, the Clapback Mailbag has neglected all the white people who aren’t racist but who aren’t actively fighting against racism. I was crafting this hilarious premise, doubled over in laughter (which, in my humble opinion,…