Search results for: “node/olopade”
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Valerie Jarrett: Third Obama or Third Wheel?
What does Valerie Jarrett do? Robert Draper (of the scathing Donald Rumsfeld expose) spills 8,000 words of ink on Jarrett for this weekend’s NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, in search of that very idea. He tells a lot of great stories about Jarrett’s influence with president Barack Obama, stretching back to the glory days in Chicago’s…
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Obama's Money Machine: Now Running Foreign Policy?
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is considering the nominations of two men to represent the United States in East Asia: Republican Governor Jon Huntsman of Utah, and Democrat John V. Roos of California. But it’s the Democratic appointment who is selling out Obama’s promise. The nomination of Huntsman as ambassador to China was sheer political…
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Obama Admits Racial Profiling Has Gone Amok
Let’s be clear about something. Most African-Americans do not wake up in the morning looking for racism. Most African-Americans don’t begin their days with a shower, a coffee, and then a calculated plan to seek out racist activity. It usually comes to us. Packaged in institutional and historical bravado or endearing quietness. We’re the ones…
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Obama Says Officer 'Acted Stupidly' in Arrest of Skip Gates
Given President Barack Obama’s reluctance to dwell on the issue of race in America, it was a surprise to hear the president’s forceful comments on last week’s controversial arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Root’s editor-in-chief. At the close of his prime-time press conference on health care Wednesday, the president addressed the touchy issue…
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Seeing Black and Seeing Red
I loved living in Cambridge, Mass., except when I didn’t. And when I didn’t was when I had left my apartment late at night to walk to the all-night corner grocery store with just that $10 bill stuffed into my pocket, having left my wallet on the bookcase in the hallway. Then, strolling along, soon…
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Skip Gates Speaks
The Root: We’ve all seen the police and media reports around your arrest last Thursday in Cambridge, Mass., Charles Ogletree issued a statement to The Root that included a synopsis of the incident. But what have you been going through since Thursday? Henry Louis Gates Jr.: I’m outraged. I can’t believe that an individual policeman…
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What Do You Call a Black Man with a Ph.D.?
Ain’t nothing post-racial about the United States of America. I say this because my best friend, a well-known, middle-aged, affluent, black man, was arrested on his own front porch after showing his identification to a white police officer who was responding to a burglary call. Though the officer quickly determined that my friend was the…
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When Color Strikes–What Next?
John McWhorter and I sat and talked in the aftermath of president Barack Obama’s speech to the NAACP. I argue that there’s a difference in Obama’s talk on race before he was president and after. We also talk Sonia Sotomayor, political organizing, the Philadelphia pool incident and the “Joshua Generation.” Here’s the cut: —DAYO OLOPADE…
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Lawyer's Statement on the Arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr.
UPDATE: The disorderly conduct charges against Henry Louis Gates Jr. were dropped on Tuesday. Statement on Behalf of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. — by Charles Ogletree This brief statement is being submitted on behalf of my client, friend, and colleague, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. This is a statement concerning the arrest of Professor Gates.…
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NASA, We Have a Problem
Forty years ago this week, a man walked on the moon. The ultimate prize in the decade-long “space race,” the two-and-a-half-hour moonwalk by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin remains a testament to American exceptionalism, technological prowess and nationalist fervor. And face it, it’s pretty thrilling to watch. In honor of meeting the scientific challenge that…