Message from KJA:  Earlier today I published a post about Catholics organizing a petition to bar Obama from delivering a speech at Notre Dame’s commencement.  A diligent Root reader discovered a few inaccuracies in my post and felt my post was misleading. The reader was right.  I stated that the Catholic church was behind the…

A year ago one of Sweden’s top medical schools expelled a student for being a Nazi sympathizer and convicted murderer.  Well, the student, Karl Svennson, was admitted to another top Swedish med school and then expelled for falsifying records.  Crazy and complicated?  Yes.  But, unlike the good ole U.S. of A., the Swedish government believes…

After last year’s first-ever sickle-cell anemia cure scientists at John Hopkins are convinced a trend is underway.   Robert Brodsky, director of the hematology division at the John Hopkins University Medicine, successfully cured Pamela Newton of Capital Heights, Maryland of her sickle-cell disease in May 2008 through a new intensive chemotherapy and a follow-up bone-marrow transplant. …

I’m not sure what I feel about Obama and his bowling joke.  Well, his “bowling like he’s in Special Olympics” joke.  He’s allowed to be make a mistake.  Right?  He’s the president; he’s not Gandhi or Mandela.  Well, they made a few mistakes, too.  Anyway… as an uncle of a Down’s Syndrome albeit mainstreamed nephew,…

So Clint Eastwood will direct the untitled Nelson Mandela biopic.  Whether you like Eastwood’s latest ventures of Gran Torino or Flags of Our Fathers, Hollywood has thrown him the wheel and he’s in the Mandela’s driver seat.  Eastwood has also cast Morgan Freeman as Mandela which will probably be Freeman’s role of a lifetime.  Eastwood…

We’ve been down this racist stereotyping road a thousands times.  You know, blacks don’t swim, blacks like watermelons, blacks don’t tan, blacks blacks blacks.  The world prides itself on knowing the ins and outs of black life and consciousness.  Most of the time the world is wrong, but hey, the effort to pigeonhole black folks…

New York City shuts down on St. Patrick’s Day.  So does Boston, San Francisco, Milwaukee… the list of cities goes on and on.  When the Irish celebrate their heritage there’s no holding back.  And I mean the liquor, the beer, the puke and the piss.  Excuse the descriptions, but I’m just trying to be real. …

Cleopatra: A Portrait of a Killer airs Monday, March 23 on BBC One. And get this, archeologists are finally letting the tightly-curled hair and full lips out of the white-washed bag. That’s right, the documentary plans to set the record straight: Cleopatra looked nothing like velvet-eyed, porcelain white Elizabeth Taylor. In fact, Cleopatra’s mother was…

There’s a lot happening in the NYC theater scene right now.  For African-American women.  And that’s revolutionary, radical and right on time.  Last night I strolled over to the Joseph Papp Public Theater in NYC to see the play The Good Negro.   And when I say stroll I mean “stroll” because I had $20 staff…

Even after Columbine and Virginia Tech, the massacre of innocent people still overwhelms me.  You’d think I’d be desensitized to the news of rampage and murder, but, in fact, it unnerves me a little more each time.  Within three days a gunman opened fire on his family and town in Alabama and a German teen…