Politics

After spending much of his first term facing criticism that he did not do enough to address issues of particular importance to minority communities, President Barack Obama appears to be making a conscious effort to make such issues a priority of his second term. On Tuesday, the president will sign two executive orders specifically aimed…

Recent Supreme Court decisions on voting rights and political contributions have rescued the Republican Party from the brink of political oblivion and instead threaten to permanently undermine the very fabric of American democracy. The court’s 5-4 decision last week in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission eliminated the aggregate cap on individual campaign donations. The ruling…

For a guy who says that running for president is “not something that I really want to do,” Dr. Ben Carson—world-renowned neurosurgeon, philanthropist and author—sure is making a lot of moves in that direction. Last month he made his second headline appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, the largest annual gathering of…

Washington, D.C., Mayor Vince Gray, who had a solid lead a month before the Democratic primary, will not serve a second term in office, the Washington Post reports. Amid scandal over campaign financing and one of the lowest voter turnouts in history, the mayor conceded defeat early Wednesday morning to Council of the District of…

Fewer than 30 days after masked Russian troops rolled their way into the Ukraine under false pretenses, the U.S. Congress moved with lightning quickness to pass a $1 billion aid package for the troubled Eastern European country. Members on both sides of the partisan aisle, while a little shaky on the details, agree that it…

A surge of sign-ups on the last day for open enrollment in President Obama’s health care initiative, one of the cornerstones of his presidency, brought the total number of enrolled beyond the White House’s original target of 7 million people. President Obama stood on the White House lawn a day after the deadline for Americans…

The College of Charleston’s board of trustees adopted in 2012 its first-ever Diversity Strategic Plan. The plan, to be implemented over a five-year period, was meant to address the college’s many “diversity challenges.” It seems the board just created itself a new challenge. The board tapped South Carolina Lt. Gov. Glenn McConnell as the college’s…

Fannie Lou Hamer was a poor black woman with a sixth-grade education who spent much of her life working in the cotton fields. Her legacy, however, demonstrates that each of us has an important voice and role to play in our democracy, and as we near the end of Women’s History Month, it is a mighty reminder  of…

Right off the bat, let’s be clear: Insults don’t elevate the dialogue. So there’s no way to condone it when a black Republican gets called a “sellout” or an “Uncle Tom.” And by that same standard, it’s equally uncool when left-leaning African Americans are referred to as “low information voters” stranded on the Democrats’ “plantation.”…

The specter of black cultural decline, or what might be called the “black-pathology hustle,” is once again making national news. Like a recurring nightmare, assertions (usually masked as allegations) of black cultural depravity periodically inspire national debates over the very meaning of race, citizenship and democracy in America. Paul Ryan’s criticism of “inner city” youths…