Politics

Every family has one, but leave it to President Barack Obama’s uncle to show up at an inauspicious time. Sixty-seven-year-old Onyango Obama was arrested in Framingham, Mass., on suspicion of drunk driving, according to the Associated Press. The uncle, who was being held without bail on an immigration detainer, told police that he planned to…

In a cavernous ballroom at Washington, D.C.’s convention center last Friday, nearly 2,000 guests gathered for the “Women Who Dare to Dream” luncheon honoring women of the civil rights movement. Originally planned as a lead-up to the postponed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial dedication, the glittering affair featured remarks and performances from civil…

These are heady times for the Rev. Al Sharpton. Earlier this week it was announced that his prime-time gig on MSNBC would be made permanent, starting Monday, Aug. 29. Until Hurricane Irene came to literally rain on his parade, his National Action Network activist group was to lead thousands in a March for Jobs and…

Peter Wallsten and Krissah Thompson of the Washington Post are reporting that President Obama is facing uncomfortable questions from the black community and black lawmakers like those in the Congressional Black Caucus. Obama’s initial strategy of distancing himself from the black electorate when campaigning in order to appeal to a broader group of Americans is…

Many Americans are struck by how politics has taken such a sharp turn toward the openly racist since the election of the nation’s first black president. Some Republicans have distributed cartoons depicting watermelon patches growing at the White House, and the president smiling with fried chicken and barbecue. One prominent South Carolina GOP activist even…

National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins said that he was “deeply dismayed” and it was “simply unacceptable” that a study, “Race, Ethnicity, and NIH Research Awards,” reported that black NIH-grant applicants were 13 percentage points less likely than whites to get NIH investigator-initiated research funding. Winning such grants is crucial for young scientists who…

A hotel maid says that she was raped by a powerful man who has since derided her just to maintain his innocence. The man in question first denied even being there but quickly changed his story when a semen sample from the woman’s uniform turned out to be his. The story blew up wider and…

When Michelle Rhee joined a panel of experts on Martha’s Vineyard to discuss the achievement gap in public education, there was no doubt that she would be a lightning rod in the discussion. She shared the stage with education historian Diane Ravitch, Harvard sociologist Lawrence Bobo, Yale psychiatrist James Comer and Princeton sociologist Angel Harris,…

“The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Va.,” as told to Thomas Gray, is accepted as the primary historical source document on the slave uprising in the predawn of Aug. 22, 1831, that left more than 50 whites dead. The pamphlet was the basis of novelist William Styron’s best-selling,…