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Marable's Malcolm X Book Puts Icon in Context
Manning Marable was never a dogmatist. While he had his own strong point of view, he was respectful of, and attentive to, those who disagreed. Marable’s last legacy is Malcolm X: A Life Reinvented, published just five days after he died. Marable courageously examined the contradictions and unanswered questions in the various accounts — including…
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Promises Kept
And let it be noted that there is no more delicate matter to take in hand, nor more dangerous to conduct, nor more doubtful in its success, than to set up as a leader in the introduction of changes. For he who innovates will have for his enemies all those who are well off under…
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The Real Deal on The New Deal
Join the washingtonpost.com Live Online discussion on THE REAL DEAL ON THE NEW DEAL with The Root’s Michael Dawson. ***** It is often forgotten that, for all of its benefits, the New Deal reinforced structural black economic disadvantage in many ways. It is certainly true that the Work Projects Administration (WPA) put many blacks to work,…
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Besmirch and Destroy
Sen. Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican, is horrified that President Obama has become the “world’s best salesman of socialism.” He grimly argues that conservatives will have to “take to the streets to stop America’s slide into socialism.” And if that is not alarming enough, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has shrilly declared that the…
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Blago’s Blues
A few weeks ago I received a phone call from two semi-drunken friends who were at a bar on the East Coast. They demanded I write about the idiot formerly known as Gov. Rod Blagojevich. I promised to do so, but deep down I probably wanted the whole shameful situation to go away. As an…
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Ugly To The End
After the last presidential debate both Karl Rove and Slate’s “Poll Tracker” electoral maps projected that Sen. Obama would win the presidency with 313 electoral votes if the election was held that day. This would be a massive Electoral College victory for Sen. Obama. On that same day, the Associated Press reported that perhaps as…
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Sexy, Yes. Art? No.
I have been gaming longer than most gamers have been alive. In the early 1970s, I was one of a handful of electronic technicians at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center who used what was allegedly the most powerful computer complex outside of the military and intelligence communities to play geeky Star Trek strategy games during…
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End Games
The Democratic Party’s primary race has reached a dangerous stage for black people. It has come to this: Both the Obama and Clinton campaigns are apparently willing to sacrifice black citizenship rights in order to win the Democratic nomination for president. On one hand, we have Sen. Clinton’s supporters being charged with intentionally trying to…
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A Nightmare of their Own Making (Smoked-Filled Rooms II)
They’re working. The rules are working as designed (see my earlier piece, No Time for Smoke-Filled Rooms), to guarantee that in a deeply divided, complicated and dangerous primary season the party elders will have the last say in choosing the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. But the people who designed, and seem so eager to…
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Thug Life on the Campaign Trail
Princeton historian Sean Wilentz has leveled an odd charge against Barack Obama. He accuses the Illinois senator’s campaign of trying to hijack the Democratic presidential nomination by arguing it has a stronger claim on the nomination because Obama has more pledged delegates than Sen. Hillary Clinton and larger percentage of the popular vote. Wilentz argues…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
