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Obama's Jiminy Cricket
It’s been suggested that Obama needs an ‘uncle.’ In fact, every American president needs a Jiminy Cricket—a royal pain in the ass who won’t bend the rules for the sake of expediency, who upholds both the letter and the spirit of the law, who won’t just go with the flow. Someone, in short, like Attorney…
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Buckwheat Tries To Get Arrested
is a former columnist for TIME magazine and a regular contributor to The Root.
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An Equal and Opposite Overreaction
Lawd, have muh-cy, we are going down that road again. Henry Louis Gates Jr. was right when he said that his nasty run-in with the Cambridge police would trigger a “racial narrative.” It’s the same one that has been unreeled since the videotaped beating of Rodney King, the trial of O.J. Simpson and the shooting…
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Under New Management
After 100 days of the Obama presidency, we’ve been reminded of what it’s like to have a grown-up in the White House. There hasn’t been a president of Obama’s maturity since, well, Ronald Reagan. And his regime, like Reagan’s, could be a game changer. Beneath his charm, Obama is all business. It’s impossible to imagine…
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Why 'More Than Just Race' Matters
I wish William Julius Wilson were as evocative a writer as he is a thinker. Over the past 30 years, the legendary Harvard sociologist has done more than any other social scientist to illuminate the desperate plight of the poor. But he buries his brilliantly nuanced analysis in such flat, academic prose that his insights…
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Bye-Bye, Buckwheat!
I almost didn’t recognize Buckwheat when he walked into the breakfast room at the Home for Retired Racial Stereotypes. Instead of the customary tangle of pigtails and ill-fitting T-shirt, his hair had been neatly trimmed, and he was dressed in a dark-blue suit, crisp white shirt and red striped tie. An American flag pin adorned his…
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Obama's First Month: A Report Card
Has it really only been a month since Barack Obama was sworn in as president? So much has happened in that short time. He has not only signed into law a humongous economic stimulus package that is the biggest spending bill in American history, but also ordered a 50 percent increase, to 51,000, in American troops in Afghanistan. He…
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The Meaning of the Moment
I can’t help it; I gotta sing. “Aaaah-maayzin’ ger-ace! How su-weeeet thuh sound … ” What an amazing day to be black. What an amazing day to be an American. This is the day we never thought we would live to see, the one our grandparents prayed for, the one that inspired my wife Gayle…
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Not So Great Expectations
It’s been amusing but not necessarily edifying, to watch Barack Obama’s foes and friends attempt to define his presidency before he has even been sworn in. Right-wing commentators reassure themselves that his victory somehow confirms that the U.S. remains a “center-right nation.” Their counterparts on the left debate whether he should model himself more on Franklin…
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A Thank You Note to White Voters
While dodging those pigs I said would fly before a black man got elected president, I got to thinking about just who black folks had to thank for Barack Obama’s historic achievement. Obama and his brilliant staff are, of course, at the top of the list for mounting what was arguably the best presidential campaign…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
