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Perry Bacon: Does Michael Steele Really Think He Can Win Black Votes In the Age of Obama?
Newly-elected Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele flew to Los Angeles over the weekend for The Tavis Smiley Festival (better known as the annual “State of the Black Union” conference)—the latest sign he is determined to tout the GOP to every black audience he can. He had pledged this during his campaign for the job,…
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Papal Doublespeak Puts Millions of Black Lives At Risk
Pope Benedict XVI apparently sees grace in ignorance. Today, he used the opening moments of his first trip to Africa to reiterate the Church’s opposition to condom use. Feels crazy just to type that out. Even worse when it’s being trotted around a continent with more than 22 million people already HIV positive, not to…
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Lou Dobbs Wants a St. Racist's Day
Somehow Lou Dobbs managed to turned St. Patrick’s Day into an excuse to make racist Asian jokes. Media Matters’ County Fair blog flagged his rant today against “ethnic holidays” and in favor of “an American day, a we’re all the same kind of day.” But Dobbs gave the lie to his call for unity before he…
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What Happens in Kabul…
I was in a taxi, about a mile from the World Trade Center, when the first plane hit on September 11. I remember the streets of New York being filled with smoke, and people wandering around dazed, like something out of a doomsday movie. I remember the free-floating fear, and thinking, “We are at war.”…
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Police State Inc.
Given my recent reaction to police (mis)conduct in the Ryan Moats incident, I found that I enjoyed Ross Douthat’s ‘Conservatives, Crime Policy and the Black Vote’ piece for THE ATLANTIC, particularly his thoughts on prison reform as an example of a shift in policy without a compromise of belief. He states: My preferred approach to…
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Mr. Cali, Cali, Cali, Man…
Interesting piece on THE BEAST this morning regarding President Obama’s curt dismissal of marijuana legalization: [T]he usually long-winded president—who famously admitted to his own youthful inhalations—answered with little more than a dismissive “No”…[saying] he doesn’t think legalization is a good strategy to grow our economy. Why not, Mr. President? Is our current strategy appreciably better?…
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Is the Auto Show Over in Detroit?
By now, a Monday morning downer on the front page shouldn’t faze me. But when the White House announced that GM and Chrysler had still not come up with meaningful enough restructuring plans to get tax money, I took it personally. That’s because I’m both black and from the Midwest and, thus, I know a…
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FBI Probes Anti-Black Vigilante Killings
Score one for investigative journalism. Back in December, THE ROOT spoke with reporter A.C. Thomspon about his exhaustive piece, published in THE NATION and ProPublica, on the vigilante murders of black New Orleans residents in the wake of Katrina. Thompson’s reporting found, among other things, disturbing signs that local police at least sanctioned, if not…
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Fake Loan Fixes Line the Path from Bad to Worse
The mortgage industry has been crowing for a couple of years now about its good faith efforts to fix the failed loans that it shouldn’t have made in the first place. The point, of course, has been to avoid any government mandate on modifications—a goal they’ve thus far accomplished. But the proof is in the…
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Right Flu, Wrong Swine
Let me be among the first to say that the move by some to rename ‘swine flu’ to ‘Mexican flu’ is offensive on its face and in its roots. It does everything to fuel unfounded fears, and it politicizes a serious health crisis in a thinly veiled effort to stoke hatred toward an already-vulnerable group.…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
