Politics
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Sister, Soldier, Voter: Tapping Into the Hidden Vote of the Black Military Woman
America should rethink the “American soldier” mythology during this year’s presidential election. The conventional wisdom, from politics to pop culture, that the military voter is white, male and Republican runs deep and false. A recent episode of HBO’s Veep showed a presidential election tipping Republican because of absentee ballots from a military town. Republican and…
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Trump’s Secret Plan to Win the Presidency: Pitting Minorities Against One Another
In this election, Donald Trump has used a grieving black father’s loss to try to pit black voters against Mexican immigrants. He employs black spokespeople to tell black voters that immigrants are taking their jobs. He tweets false crime statistics as a ploy to get black people to talk about “black-on-black” crime and distract from…
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Why Black Voters Are the Most Rational Voters of 2016
Let’s face it. Black voters are about the only folks in 2016 who haven’t lost their damn minds. Contrary to some nimble-minded pop-culture notions that either we’re not politically sharp or we don’t care about elections or we just vote for people who look like us, black voters (for the most part) are a rather…
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Yes, Bernie Sanders, the System Is Rigged—What Else Is New?
Bernie Sanders has no reason to be angry. He’s done more to raise his profile in the last 18 months than he’s done in over 30 years in the House and Senate. He’s managed to drag the Democratic Party left after years of centrist posturing by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. He’s raised millions and…
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Scold-in-Chief? The Love-Hate Relationship Between HBCUs and President Obama
It’s complicated. That could be the official theme of President Barack Obama’s rapport with the African-American community in general, but even more so regarding his administration’s eight-year relationship with HBCUs, which we examine in this edition of The Root’s monthly series His Lasting Legacy. The expectations that came with the election of America’s first black president—combined…
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Racist Michelle Obama Cartoon Is Just Another Example of Conservatives’ Blatant Hypocrisy
Michelle Obama has been plagued by racist depictions since before her husband won the White House and throughout his presidency. There was the infamous cover of the New Yorker picturing the first lady as an Afro-haired, machine gun-toting militant in combat boots giving her husband a fist bump, also known as a “terrorist fist jab.”…
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Black Trump Exec’s Love for Her ‘Boss’ Makes Her Cry
“The house Negro always looked out for his master … lived right up next to his master … ate the same food his master ate and wore his same clothes. And he could talk just like his master—good diction. And he loved his master more than his master loved himself. That’s why he didn’t want…
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Donald Trump Can Become President. Here’s How
Political pundits said all last spring that Donald Trump wouldn’t get into the presidential race. Then he did. Throughout the fall, when he was leading in polls and insulting every constituency in America, those same talking heads thought Trump would implode. Then he didn’t. Finally, when Trump came in second to Ted Cruz at the…
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10 People of Color Hillary Clinton Could Pick as Her Vice President
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton will be announcing her running mate within the next two months. Yes, that person is more than likely to be Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who is in an important swing state and speaks fluent Spanish, but we can dream, can’t we? Here are 10 African-American and Latino prospects the former…
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Will Party Loyalty Trump Fears About Donald Trump for Black Republicans?
In an era when “Black lives matter” has become a crucial rallying cry across the country and when African-American concern for racial inequality and discrimination hovers at extraordinary levels, it can be difficult to assess the political significance of a group as marginal as black Republicans. Only 11 percent of black people identify as or…