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Hillary's Scarlett O'Hara Act
There’s been a lot of talk about women and their choices since Super Tuesday, when African American women overwhelmingly voted for Sen. Barack Obama, while white women picked Sen. Hillary Clinton. Some pundits automatically concluded that “race trumped gender” among black women. I hate this analysis because it relegates black women to junior-partner status in…
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Who Died and Made Tavis King?
Who put Tavis Smiley in charge? Over the past two months African Americans have emerged as equal partners in a multi-racial, intergenerational, bipartisan, national coalition led by the most exciting political candidate of the past four decades, who also happens to be the first viable African-American presidential possibility in our history. So why is Tavis…
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Using Our Roots Against Us
Monday’s release of a photo showing Barack Obama dressed as a Somali elder during his 2006 visit to northeastern Kenya was not just cynical, cowardly and out-of-bounds, it was also deeply ironic. After all, it is Black History Month. During February, PBS featured the special African American Lives II. The show, hosted by The Root…
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Redemption Along the High Road
The high road is a hard road. Barack Obama is often compared to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. because of his soaring rhetoric and charismatic grace. But on Tuesday I night I realized that Obama is more like King in another way: He is leading a 21st Century non-violent, political campaign. Over the past week…
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Our Jeremiah
A black orator stood before a rapt audience, his voice rising to a crescendo as he made this fiery statement: “Statesmen of America beware what you do! The soil is in readiness, and the seed-time has come. Nations, not less than individuals, reap as they sow. The dreadful calamities of the past few years came…
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Behind Coretta's Veil: Black Women and the Burdens of Loss
Forty years later there are two particularly poignant and enduring images associated with Dr. King’s assassination. The first is the circle of men surrounding Martin’s body on that Memphis balcony as they point in the direction of the shooter. The second is Coretta Scott King’s mournful and resolute face beneath her widow’s black veil. Both…
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Rape and Race: We Have to Talk About It
I witnessed something truly astonishing on Monday night: a public discussion of black women’s experiences of sexual violence at the hands of black men. It was an intergenerational group of black men and women, gay and straight, survivors and perpetrators, all grappling with the legacy of rape and race. The experience was unusual because black…
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How the Bronx Turned Green
It’s not surprising that many African Americans give Earth Day a pass. When you live poorer and die younger in the land of plenty, it can be hard to get excited about protecting the planet at large. The oppression of black people covers centuries of troubled terrain from forced agricultural labor, to contemporary land loss,…
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Wright Prophet, Wrong Direction
Reverend Jeremiah Wright has spent the last several days carefully placing himself within the prophetic tradition of African American religion. I attempted to place him in this same context here on The Root when I explained that he, like the biblical Jeremiah, is among the truth tellers who regularly warn the government that divine destruction…
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Dear Gov. Dean: Are You Ready to Lead?
Dear Gov. Dean, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are not tied. You know this. There is little chance of a gracious settlement offer from the Clinton camp. The slim margin in Indiana gives her just enough rationale to stay in it. Given that she will not voluntarily withdraw, Mr. Dean, I am asking you to…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
