Politics

Most Americans take drinking water for granted, turning on the tap and getting a fresh, clean supply. That’s not the case in every region, however, and dwindling resources make access to potable water an emerging, coast-to-coast problem. The Root spoke with organizations that are addressing the H2O shortage about why it’s happening, whom it most…

James Baldwin, the acclaimed African-American novelist and poet, famously wrote, “Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” Baldwin was speaking of the psychological complexity of socioeconomic disparities. His observations were specifically of the African-American community at the height of segregation in the 1960s, but the concept…

Texas Gov. Rick Perry joined the crowded GOP presidential field on Saturday, slamming President Obama for “rudderless” leadership, according to the Associated Press.  Perry announced his plans before an overflow crowd at the conservative RedState Gathering in South Carolina, an important early primary state. His entry came hours before the release of results from a…

Lawd, have mercy upon us! There’s not a religious bone in my body, but the field of Republican presidential candidates has me crying out to Jesus for relief. If the Creator intends to punish America for its multiple transgressions, it might be by inflicting one of these bozos upon us. That would truly be a…

Racists have officially lost their minds. In recent weeks, the venom spewed at President Barack Obama would leave one to believe that we are in the midst of a racist renaissance. “A dick,” “jackass,” “tar baby, “your boy” — you name it and the president has been called it. For some reason, some people are…

Sheryl Huggins Salomon is senior editor-at-large of The Root and a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based editorial consultant. Follow her on Twitter.

The New York Post is reporting that President Barack Obama traveled to Dover Air Force Base Tuesday to attend a ceremony honoring the returning bodies of 30 US service members killed when their helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan over the weekend. Two cargo planes — carrying the remains of the 22 Navy SEALs, three…

NEWS Jobs are Offered, and Thousands Turn Up The 4,000 job seekers who showed up at a Cleveland State University job fair didn’t need to watch the bloodletting on Wall Street Monday to know what they wanted: jobs. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) hosted the fair, and afterward, she and other members of the Congressional Black…

So the Tea Party got what it wanted. The holdouts against the debt-limit deal indicated they didn’t care if the U.S. defaulted and couldn’t pay its bills. They didn’t believe Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s warnings that a credit default would be disastrous. And they didn’t want to give President Obama a victory. So they held…