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What’s the Endgame for the Civil Rights Movement, Part 2?
Justifiable outrage and protests are sweeping through major cities like a Hunger Games brush fire. Traffic jams and sit-ins are holiday du jour while politicians anxiously switch up on their talking points. Black parents find themselves in tear-filled horror when the kids are out and don’t answer the cellphone. The tipping point of the civil…
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What the Eric Garner Case Says About Staten Island Politics
You can learn a lot about Staten Island if you catch Method Man flowing on a classic Wu Tang album. Another way to capture the New York City borough’s vibe is by watching Eric Garner get choked to death by an overzealous Gotham cop and then watching a grand jury in Richmond County—the jurisdiction that…
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How the St. Louis County Prosecutor Played Us
Pay close attention. Because if you want to learn how to properly out-slick, crisis-manage and manipulate burgeoning social-justice movements, this is how you do it. That was the big lesson drawn from the draining weeks of knife-slicing tension. Ferguson, Mo., just wrote a textbook on how governments can time, script and engineer racially charged grand…
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There’s a Lot That Needs Fixing, So Why Focus on Immigration?
Is executive-order toughness on immigration reform really worth shutting down our $4 trillion government again in a standoff with Republicans? Sure, the U.S. immigration system itself—a bit rickety under the weight of 11 million undocumented immigrants and ranked ninth (pdf) out of 30 countries by the Immigration Policy Center—could use some fixing. But what else rooted…
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Is President Obama Getting His Mojo Back?
The last thing any sane or seasoned political observer expected from a president who just underwent a midterm-election root canal are two major deals with China on climate change and trade. Within days of a new Republican majority in the Senate and Tea Party sweetening in the House, he’s also got a sudden burst of…
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Will the New Black Republicans in Congress Be Lawmakers—or Talk Show Hosts?
With all the postelection buzz about historic firsts and trailblazing black Republicans crashing Congress, you’d think this was the first time conservatives of color would be stepping foot on the floor of the House of Representatives. As a matter of fact, it’s not. Yet as three black Republicans found themselves elected Nov. 4 in a…
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Election Watchers Weigh In: Did Voter-ID Laws Suppress the Vote?
More than a week later, we’re still trying to figure this one out: How much of an impact did voting restrictions have on the 2014 midterm elections? And remember, voting restrictions don’t just mean the infamous voter-ID laws that we all know and Republicans love. Altogether, 21 states kept an array of voting restrictions in…
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Loretta Lynch Is a Fearless Prosecutor—She Might Be Just Who Obama Needs at DOJ
The nomination of Loretta Lynch as the next attorney general of the United States perhaps displays as much presidential deftness as it does defiance. Clearly, in the wake of last week’s election, President Barack Obama wants to show some. And while some observers assume that Lynch will have a relatively straightforward Senate confirmation, since she’s…
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How Will That Shocker of an Election Shake Things Up on the Road to 2016?
The next two years will be twisted in knots—for Democrats, for Republicans and for the “black electorate.” University of Florida political scientist Michael McDonald estimates that a little less than 37 percent of the voter-eligible population voted in this week’s election. That prompted President Obama to mic-drop twice during his mea culpa-less postelection press conference that…
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Where Did All the Black Voters Go on Election Day?
With midterm hangover setting in, many will chatter and finger-point into next month about what happened, who did what and why. And at the center of it will be questions about the black vote. In crucial Senate and gubernatorial races where the black vote was needed most—Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina—Democrats faced…
