Janet Mock Breaks Through the Isolation for Transgender Women of Color

By Jenn M. Jackson the root.com I recently added a new name to my list of inspirational writers: Janet Mock. Her best-selling memoir, Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love and So Much More, is a beautiful—at times bumpy—journey through girlhood. Reminiscent of Zora Neale Hurston’s iconic Their Eyes Were Watching God, it is a touching…

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New Malcolm X Diary Reveals a Revolutionary Optimist

By Todd Steven Burroughs theroot.com While many in the civil rights movement community this summer are celebrating the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, another important half-century milestone—and a significantly blacker, more radical one—was recently acknowledged in New York City: the founding of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, Malcolm X’s political organization. Malcolm X, founder of the…

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Flowchart to ID Racism

By Meredith Clark, MSNBC.com If a post on the Iowa Republican Party’s Facebook page is any indication, the right’s efforts to appeal to non-white voters still have a ways to go. On Friday night, the Iowa GOP surfaced a less-than-helpful flowchart to identify racism. The “Is someone a racist?” graphic was posted to the official…

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Robin Roberts Broadcasts Her Sexuality

By Cavan Sieckowski, HuffingtonPost.com “Good Morning America” anchor Robin Roberts came out Sunday in a touching post thanking her “long time girlfriend.” Amber Laign is a licensed massage therapist from the San Francisco Bay Area, according to People magazine. She and Roberts met through mutual friends and have been together for 10 years. “I am grateful…

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A Hug That Earned a Student Suspension

By Rebecca Klein, HuffingtonPost.com A petition for Sam McNair, a Georgia teen suspended from school earlier this month after hugging a teacher, is gaining steam around the Internet. According to ABC’s “Good Morning America,” the school released a statement clarifying that “hearing officers consider witness testimony, a review of the known facts, and a student’s…

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Santa is White?

By: Russell Contreras, AP.org A New Mexico high school teacher has been disciplined after a parent says the man told his black son that Santa Claus is white. Officials at the school in Rio Rancho, about 15 miles north of Albuquerque, announced Friday that the teacher recently was disciplined for his comments to the student, but they…

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Can Racism Lead to Health Complications for Your Child?

By Janell Ross, TheRoot.com The big revelations coming out of Emory didn’t stop there. Preterm birth is long understood to have a potential impact on a child’s cognition and language-learning skills. But Michael Kramer, an epidemiologist at Emory’s School of Public Health, examined the birth and school records of thousands of Georgians born between 1998…

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Black Men Arrested for Escorting White Teen

By Christina Ng, ABCnews.com A teenage Oklahoma hip hop dancer is still shaken after her dream trip to a Texas dance studio ended up with her in handcuffs and taken to Child Protective Services and her guardians in police custody. “They had nothing on us,” dance instructor Emmanuel Hurd told ABCNews.com. “Instead of going the route…

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Can We Trust Each Other?

By Connie Cass,  AP.org We’re not talking about the loss of faith in big institutions such as the government, the church or Wall Street, which fluctuates with events. For four decades, a gut-level ingredient of democracy – trust in the other fellow – has been quietly draining away. These days, only one-third of Americans say most…

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