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  • Shake-up in Shaker

    “Do you live in the good ‘hood or the bad ‘hood?” The question came by email. A friend who lives in my native North Carolina was reading a New York Times article about Shaker Heights, Ohio, where I live. She wanted to know if I was safe. The Times story recounted the brutal, New Year’s…

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  • The Bourgie Blues

    Alana and Craig Wilson live in a predominately white, middle-class subdivision in Virginia’s Fairfax County, just outside of Washington, D.C. Across the Potomac River, Terry and Rodney Jefferson reside in majority-black Prince George’s County, Maryland. The Wilsons and Jeffersons are black and middle-class. Both families, deeply concerned about the world their children will inherit, do…

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  • Less Merlot, More Meatloaf

    If Sen. Barack Obama harbors any hope of winning the Ohio Democratic primary, he will have to flip the script on his so-far successful formula. In most of his primary and caucus victories, Obama relied on the energy and excitement of college kids to build a movement-like crusade. The settings for his stump speeches have…

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  • Comfort Level Rising

    CLEVELAND – Well, that wasn’t much of a debate. Not that I expected it to be. As Democratic presidential hopefuls criss-crossed Ohio last week in search of votes, their respective debate strategies became obvious long before they took the stage.Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York would attack, throwing all her best punches to frustrate Sen.…

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  • Fool Me Once …

    I’m disgusted with Bill and Hillary Clinton. Not merely because they played the race card on Barack Obama, but because they’ve done it before. It worked to perfection for them in 1992. I saw it up close when I was a part of the Los Angeles Times’ political team covering Bill Clinton’s successful bid for…

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  • Let It Be Over

    Even though I live in Ohio, I don’t have a clue which Democrat will win the state’s presidential primary today. At this point, I almost don’t care. I just want it to be over.The newspaper where I work reported over the weekend that it’s “neck and neck.” It said Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York…

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  • Café au Lait, Sans Politics S’il Vous Plait

    I’d had enough of the political horse race which seemed to consume every intelligent – and not so intelligent – conversation for months. So I left the country, hoping a week in France would rescue me from the unending palaver about the Democratic presidential campaign. It didn’t work. Seems the folks over there are just…

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  • The Death of a Movement

    One day, one hour and 47 minutes after three bullets struck him down in a Los Angeles hotel kitchen, Robert Francis Kennedy, the junior senator from New York and likely Democratic presidential nominee, died at 1:44 a.m., June 6, 1968. It would take years, decades even, for historians to make sense of that single event.…

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  • Why Barack Owes Clarence Thomas

    Lately, I’ve had the most spirited debates with my students and friends, and I always come away feeling like the loser. I, for argument’s sake, draw a straight line between Barack Obama’s White House aspirations and the embarrassing spectacle of Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation. As soon as I dare utter “Thomas” in the same…

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  • Bored on the Fourth of July

    The Fourth of July is complicated for me. It’s my country’s birthday and a national holiday. But I’m not going to wave a miniature Old Glory or dress up like Uncle Sam in red, white and blue. If I go out after dark to see fireworks and listen to John Philip Sousa’s war music, it’s because…

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