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After the Charlie Hebdo Attack, Can a Divided France Achieve Egalité, Fraternité and Diversité?
Paris: French President François Hollande gave a stirring speech about diversity this week. The topic would hardly raise an eyebrow in the U.S., but it’s a rare occurrence in France, which has struggled to integrate immigrants from North and West Africa into its ideal of the colorblind republic. He spoke at the solemn funeral service for three…
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Good Riddance, ‘Baby Doc’
Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, Haiti’s former dictator, is to be buried Saturday in the nation’s capital, Port-au-Prince, without benefit of a state-sponsored funeral. As I discovered on a recent trip to Haiti, some Haitians, frustrated by the lack of economic progress and forgetful of the oppression he once represented, had begun to speak nostalgically of…
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Microsoft’s New Leadership: Is Tech Embracing Diversity? Not Quite
A remarkable aspect of Microsoft’s announcement of new leadership this week is that hardly anyone brought up the issue of race. Yet the biggest software company in the world will now be led by an Indian-American chief executive officer and an African-American chairman. The announcement that insider Satya Nadella, 46, will become the third CEO of…
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We Need You Now, Bill Raspberry!
(The Root) — Today, we will give Bill Raspberry the kind of send-off he would have appreciated. Prominent journalists, editors, politicians, ordinary people and friends will gather in Washington, D.C.’s majestic National Cathedral to pay their last respects; there will be flowers, music and frequent retellings of one of the most remarkable careers in our…
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Why France Can't Say the M-Word
(The Root) — When new French President François Hollande’s cabinet was unveiled on May 16, the headline in all the French media was gender parity: 17 of the 34 posts went to women, a first for a French government. What the commentators or the news stories didn’t mention was the ethnic composition of the cabinet…
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Time to Stand Up to Police Mistreatment
We can be sure about one thing as we try to understand the Trayvon Martin case: There will be other Trayvon Martins. Maybe tomorrow or next week or next month, other young black men will die under ambiguous circumstances at the hands of law enforcement — or, in Martin’s case, law enforcement’s surrogate: an overzealous…
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Andrew Breitbart's Dirty Legacy
When Andrew Breitbart died suddenly on March 1 at age 43, it was not surprising that so many commentators said nice things about the man. We still have a strong taboo about speaking ill of the departed, and an early death is a shocking reminder of our own mortality. But there was no excuse for…
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The Truth About Technology Jobs
When Steve Jobs died, one fascinating anecdote rose out of the sea of words about the co-founder of Apple. Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson recounted a dinner attended by Jobs and President Barack Obama. “What would it take to make iPhones in the U.S.?” the president wanted to know. Blunt as always, Jobs replied, “Those jobs…
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Haiti's Uncertain Future, 2 Years Later
Two years ago, at 4:53 p.m. on Jan. 12, 2010, the earth shrugged and added another chapter to the sequence of tragedies that define Haiti’s history. The 7.0-magnitude earthquake killed an estimated 300,000 people, destroyed 80 percent of the capital city of Port-au-Prince and left more than a million Haitians homeless. Nearly all public buildings…
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Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
