Politics

GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain said that he opposes the reauthorization of benefits that allow up to 99 weeks of support for the long-term jobless, asking where the help would end, according to the Huffington Post. “Where do we stop?” he asked Candy Crowley during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Here again,…

It’s a cruel irony that many who fought against South Africa’s white-minority regime and its harsh apartheid laws are now accusing the black-led African National Congress government — many of whom also fought the same battle — of instituting a law that is a throwback to those oppressive days. And what falls into the same…

The Occupy Wall Street phenomenon has a thing or two to teach us about, of all things, affirmative action. One of those affirmative-action-all-the-time spells will most likely be on us again — soon. Abigail Fisher has appealed to the Supreme Court in her 2008 case against the University of Texas at Austin — denied by…

Has President Barack Obama’s first term embodied the idealism of the 2008 campaign? The answer is debatable, according to interviews with nine prominent black academics in the run-up to next year’s presidential election. For the last in the series, The Root Interviewed Marc Lamont Hill, associate professor of English education at Teachers College, Columbia University.…

Has President Barack Obama’s first term embodied the idealism of the 2008 campaign? The answer is debatable, according to interviews with nine prominent black academics in the run-up to next year’s presidential election. For the eighth in the series, The Root interviewed Imani Perry, professor of African-American studies at Princeton University. Read the other interviews…

Has President Barack Obama’s first term embodied the idealism of the 2008 campaign? The answer is debatable, according to interviews with nine prominent black academics in the run-up to next year’s presidential election. For the seventh in this series, The Root interviewed Richard Thompson Ford, the George E. Osborne Professor of Law at Stanford Law…

The highly anticipated, totally predictable failure of Congress’ so-called super committee is but the latest highly anticipated, totally predictable failure of our political system to address America’s economic crisis. And though many analysts will strive for a balanced assessment of who is to blame, there really is only one villain: fanatical right-wingers so determined to…

Has President Barack Obama’s first term embodied the idealism of the 2008 campaign? The answer is debatable, according to interviews with nine prominent black academics in the run-up to next year’s presidential election. For the sixth in the series, The Root interviewed Hugh B. Price, former head of the National Urban League and a senior…

One of Occupy Wall Street’s greatest achievements thus far has been its aggressive — and very public — underscoring of what we have all known for a long time: America is a nation of tremendous, heartbreaking inequality. But in the midst of the public debate over whether the movement’s aims are always crystal clear, what…