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Rating Obama: It's Down to Black and White
Twenty-four months after President Obama was sworn in as American’s first African-American president, 1,006 people of all races responding to an online survey by The Root are at times sharply divided on his achievements, and particularly on the racial climate in the country: * While just 15 percent of whites believe that hate crimes, police…
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Tunisian President Ben Ali Flees His Country
Tunisia’s President Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali is reported to have stepped down from power and fled his country amid the worst unrest in decades. Several European newspapers reported that Tunisian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi announced he had taken over as interim president.Ben Ali was reported to have boarded a flight Friday evening out of the…
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Ellen Stewart, a Force in Avant-Garde Theater, Dead at 91
Ellen Stewart, who started out as a dress designer, launched a theater, LaMaMa, in the basement of an East Village coffeehouse in 1961 because a friend couldn’t get a play produced. Over the next half century, Stewart became a powerful influence in experimental and avant-garde theater. She was recognized with a MacArthur “genius” award in 1985. She died…
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Haiti's Yearlong Aftershock
What has Haiti done to deserve this? A year after the devastating earthquake, many Haitians and Haitian Americans can’t help asking themselves what this poor little Caribbean nation has done to suffer such an unbroken string of calamities. The earthquake of Jan. 12, 2010, was the most brutal, of course — killing some 230,000 people…
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Remember John Lewis' Warning About Violent Talk?
We were warned by Rep. John Lewis two years ago. He took John McCain and Sarah Palin to task during the 2008 presidential campaign for “sowing the seeds of hatred and division.” Lewis knew well the consequences of political violence; he was badly beaten during civil rights protests in the South a half century ago.…
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Bill O'Reilly Bags Obama for Super Sunday
It seems that relations between President Obama and Fox News are thawing a bit. The president has agreed to be interviewed by Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly on Feb. 6, just before the Super Bowl, one of the highest-rated programs in television. It’s become something of a tradition for Obama to get grilled before the…
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Tavis Smiley Comes to Washington
Tavis Smiley is unabashed about bringing his controversial road show to President Obama’s turf. The talk show host, a persistent critic of the president, has been an advocate of a “black agenda” that would focus federal resources directly on issues that affect black America. Next week Smiley will preside over a three-hour discussion in Washington,…
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'Huckleberry Finn' Without the N-Word?
Mark Twain might have turned over in his grave on this one — but more likely he would have found the humor in this lame attempt at revisionism. The proliferation of the n-word in Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has always made it a tricky book to teach. One scholar has come up with a…
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For Africans, Dakar's Black Arts Festival Was the Place to Be
While much of the world’s media was focused on the growing political crisis in the Ivory Coast in December, thousands converged on Dakar, Senegal, for one of those rarest of events: the World Festival of Black Arts. The event featured some of Africa’s biggest names: heads of state, from Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to Libya’s Muhammar Qaddafi;…
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Adopted Haitian Children Experience a White Christmas
Nearly 200 adopted Haitian children arrived in Paris last weekend to a cold, snowy Christmas. Two chartered planes brought the children from Haiti after long delays and complications caused by last January’s earthquake and the recent protests following the disputed election. A flight last Friday landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport with 84 children aboard,…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
