That’s apparently what the WaPo has in mind with The Root, an online web-zine the paper launches today, which it says will combine “intelligent, thought-provoking discussion of issues from a variety of black perspectives and a round-up of news from around the world with an interactive genealogical section, creating a unique online destination devoted to the black experience.”

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates — who once declared that “To say that black art is a thing apart, separate from the whole, is a racist fiction” — will serve as the founding editor-in-chief. Malcolm Gladwell, Thelma Golden, William Julius Wilson, John McWhorter, and Charlayne Hunter Gault will be among the regular contributors.

Filed under: Politics is Personal, Pop! Goes the Culture