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Beer Goggles: The Lessons of Skip Gates' Arrest
In honor of the reconciliatory beer being shared tonight at the White House, between president Barack Obama, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr, and Cambridge police Sergeant Joseph Crowley, it’s worth revisiting, however briefly, discussion of the larger issues raised by the arrest. I appeared on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show to discuss racial profiling and race…
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Live From Washington, It's Urban Affairs
After weeks of uncertainty and anticipation, the White House Office of Urban Affairs has rolled off the assembly line. The office is designed to facilitate and coordinate programs that improve the lives of city dwellers, from the food served in urban classrooms to the bolts that gird subway lines. President Barack Obama has finally addressed…
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Valerie Jarrett: Third Obama or Third Wheel?
What does Valerie Jarrett do? Robert Draper (of the scathing Donald Rumsfeld expose) spills 8,000 words of ink on Jarrett for this weekend’s NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, in search of that very idea. He tells a lot of great stories about Jarrett’s influence with president Barack Obama, stretching back to the glory days in Chicago’s…
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Obama's Money Machine: Now Running Foreign Policy?
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is considering the nominations of two men to represent the United States in East Asia: Republican Governor Jon Huntsman of Utah, and Democrat John V. Roos of California. But it’s the Democratic appointment who is selling out Obama’s promise. The nomination of Huntsman as ambassador to China was sheer political…
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Obama Says Officer 'Acted Stupidly' in Arrest of Skip Gates
Given President Barack Obama’s reluctance to dwell on the issue of race in America, it was a surprise to hear the president’s forceful comments on last week’s controversial arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Root’s editor-in-chief. At the close of his prime-time press conference on health care Wednesday, the president addressed the touchy issue…
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Skip Gates Speaks
The Root: We’ve all seen the police and media reports around your arrest last Thursday in Cambridge, Mass., Charles Ogletree issued a statement to The Root that included a synopsis of the incident. But what have you been going through since Thursday? Henry Louis Gates Jr.: I’m outraged. I can’t believe that an individual policeman…
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NASA, We Have a Problem
Forty years ago this week, a man walked on the moon. The ultimate prize in the decade-long “space race,” the two-and-a-half-hour moonwalk by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin remains a testament to American exceptionalism, technological prowess and nationalist fervor. And face it, it’s pretty thrilling to watch. In honor of meeting the scientific challenge that…
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Black to the Future?
A 100th birthday is a terrible thing to waste. Mindful of that fact, the NAACP has embarked on an all out celebration at its centennial conference in New York. It has attracted almost 2,500 delegates, including Gen. Colin Powell and Attorney General Eric Holder. President Barack Obama will also address the gathering. In all likelihood,…
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Swagga Goes International
Is Jay-Z George Bush? SLATE sister site FOREIGN POLICY recently compared hip hop to geostrategy. Mark Lynch takes on the recent back-and-forth between rapper Jay-Z and less successful (though still famous) MCs like The Game, Nas, and 50 Cent, using Jay-Z’s diss tracks, and his responses to those of others, to form a crudish theory…
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Sonia Sotomayor's Confirmation Hearing: The Drinking Game
The first session of judge Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing was a meaningless display of platitudes. Some Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, like Lindsey Graham, saw the writing on the wall: “Unless you have a complete meltdown, you are going to be confirmed,” he told her. And with that said, just about everyone else in…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
