Politics

(The Root) — The killing of an unarmed teenage boy isn’t something you’d expect to be political. You would certainly never expect it to inspire gleeful adulation from any American of supposedly “good conscience.” But it appears that some Republicans — and prominent conservative talking heads in particular — have developed a metastasizing form of “Obama…

After her highly criticized appearance on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, juror B37, who found George Zimmerman not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter in the killing of Trayvon Martin, has released a statement to the press. CNN anchor Carol Costello published the brief statement on her Facebook page. Here it is in its entirety: Thank you…

(The Root) — Lowell Hawthorne’s immigrant tale isn’t exactly a secret. In 2003 Black Enterprise magazine named Hawthorne’s Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery and Grill Inc. one of the top 100 black-owned companies in the United States. And when Hawthorne, Golden Krust’s CEO, published a book late last year about his journey from new American to…

(The Root) — The NAACP is asking supporters to sign a petition urging the Department of Justice to open a civil rights case against George Zimmerman. The call to action is in a letter signed by President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous, distributed in the first hours after a jury announced its acquittal of the…

We all know that rapper Jay-Z is in pretty well with President Obama. You’ve seen the pictures that he and his wife, Beyoncé, have taken with Obama. The president has even gone on record to say he’s a fan of Jay-Z’s music. And earlier this week, Jay-Z revealed in a Hot 97 interview with Angie…

(The Root) — Following the recent Supreme Court decision declaring the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional, President Barack Obama’s embrace of marriage equality and the repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” gay Americans are experiencing their very own civil rights era. But the struggle isn’t over, and there are forgotten faces among the jubilant crowds:…

After welcoming daughter North West into the world just three weeks ago, rapper Kanye West and girlfriend Kim Kardashian have decided to wed, according to reports. And in true Kimye style, they’ll do so lavishly with a ceremony in Egypt. Although the exact location has not been selected yet, Yahoo reports that Kim wants to…

Yasiin Bey (widely known as the rapper Mos Def) teamed up with the human rights group Reprieve to release a four-minute documentary on the controversial force-feeding procedure undergone by Guantanamo Bay detainees during Ramadan. The video premiered on Sunday at The Guardian‘s website, the day before Ramadan begins. Ramadan observers fast throughout the month. Although…

Since the Egyptian military ousted President Mohamed Morsi, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman says one way Egypt could come together is for the United States to support a unity coalition. ANYONE who has followed Middle East politics knows that this is a region where extremists tend to go all the way and moderates…

(The Root) — A lot has changed since 1903, when W.E.B. Du Bois described black Americans as possessing what he called a “double consciousness,” caught between a self-conception as Americans and as people of African descent. As he put it in The Souls of Black Folk: “The Negro ever feels his two-ness-an American, a Negro;…