Politics

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,…

Who can blame anyone for wanting to get away from the stormy, humid clime that is the norm in the nation’s capital in August and repair to the quiet beaches, charming towns, delicious seafood and intimate parties that are mainstays of this island outpost off the Massachusetts coast? Well, anyone except for Barack Obama. The…

Written by James McGrath Morris On the morning of July 7, 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower entered the Indian Treaty Room in the Executive Office Building, where 165 members of the overwhelmingly white and male press corps were gathered. After briefly congratulating the reporters on the media’s efforts to reduce fireworks casualties during the recent…