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Obama’s Super Smart Health Reform Play
The White House led today’s rollout of its $3.5 trillion budget by making a big splash on health care—creating a $634 billion fund for health care reform, which the president called a “very substantial down payment.” It’s a bold choice, to be sure, but it’s both smart and unavoidable. By starting with the money, instead…
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The State of AIDS in Black America
Barack Obama stood, jacket off and sleeves rolled, straining to be heard over the roaring crowd that had welcomed him home to Kenya. It was Aug. 26, 2006, and the world was already watching. The young senator was just a few months away from launching his improbable bid to become the 44th president of the…
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Still Shooting At Us
It’s an odd sort of memorial we arrive at today: Looking back on a 10-year-old police execution of an unarmed black man. It feels terribly incongruent with the political high we’re now on, more like a bad memory than a resonant reminder of the challenges we face as a nation. But here we are. It…
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Shock Theatre
There’s already a dangerously thin line between parody and minstrelsy; just ask Dave Chappelle. But Young Jean Lee isn’t afraid to walk it. The brilliant, young director and playwright has taken great pleasure in obscuring the line further—and she’s winning critical acclaim for doing so. Lee just closed a wildly successful New York City run…
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Paterson’s Power Play
David Paterson has spoken, and the junior senator from New York is… Kirsten Gillibrand. Wait, Kirsten who? “I recognize, for many New Yorkers, this is the first time you’ve heard my name,” Gillibrand said, after Paterson introduced her at a midday press conference. But, we’ll come back to that. But first, a word in defense…
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Beg Your Pardon?
Here’s how bad things got in George W. Bush’s Justice Department. In August 2004, Voting Section Chief John Tanner sent an e-mail to Bradley Schlozman—more on him later—in which he asked for a cup of coffee. Schlozman asked Tanner how he takes his java and Tanner replied, “Mary Frances Berry style—black and bitter.” Yes, he…
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CHIP-ing Away at Bush
Congress is likely to take its first meaningful swipe at the Bush era today by passing a long-awaited expansion of the public health insurance program for poor children. We spend more than $2 trillion a year on health care and still leave 1 in 9 kids without coverage, but Bush twice found reason to veto…
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Best of 2008: Kai Wright's Picks
THE REAL PRIZE : I was torn between two essays, both by Kim McLarin—one of The Root’s gems, by the way. I loved her playful but devastating response to Whiteygate. So much about America’s purported conversation on race is simply absurd, and Kim beautifully illustrated that fact with her mocking attempt to take America’s bizarre…
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A Conversation with A.C. Thompson
America has never had a terribly forthright relationship with its history. No surprise, then, that three years after Katrina laid bare the deep, deadly inequality festering in our nation’s cities, we’ve already blotted the memory. In a breathtaking article in this week’s edition of The Nation magazine (reprinted today in The Root), investigative reporter A.C.…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
