Politics

Looking back on the campaign slogan — “Change You Can Believe In” — it’s pretty easy to imagine President Barack Obama sitting alone after hours in the Oval Office like a would-be Jerry Maguire, thinking: “It was only a mission statement.” When he said “change,” he was probably thinking about a more robust kind of…

We haven’t wanted to face it. We’ve tried to avoid it. We’ve hoped that last summer’s town halls, the Birthers, the deliberate misinformation about President Barack Obama, the rise of the Tea Party, the refusal of Republican leadership to engage with the president in good faith — we hoped that all of these things represented…

Lawrence Garrison felt a tinge of hope last month when President Barack Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced the disparity in the amounts of powder cocaine and crack cocaine required for mandatory minimum prison sentences. The hope was not for him, you see. He is a free man, so to speak. The 37-year-old…

For three years, D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee promoted the notion that education reform could happen only if she was totally in charge and everything was done her way. It was her way — or her way. She justified every policy, every action, by saying that it was all about the kids, not about…

Rosa Parks was a demure seamstress who defied a Montgomery, Ala., bus driver’s order to give up her seat to a white man because — on that particular day — she was tired. Her spontaneous act sparked a 1955 bus boycott that launched the civil rights movement. Sound familiar? It should. It’s the tale told…

President Obama participated in a town hall meeting sponsored by CNBC yesterday. He fielded questions about the economy from supporters, many of whom voiced frustration with some of his choices. The president defended his record on the economy and jobs without blaming former President Bush. Bloggers are tethering themselves to one attendee who stated, “I’m…

The most fundamental political right in our society is the right to vote. Today (Sept. 21) the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco will hear arguments in a case (Farrakhan v. Gregoire) that accuses the state of Washington of stripping that fundamental political right from citizens in a racially discriminatory…

Mayor Adrian Fenty’s loss in Washington, D.C., last week was a crying shame. Black wiser heads muse about how the system prevents black people from voting “their interests” — Harvard Law’s Lani Guinier comes to mind — and yet black D.C. residents kicked out a mayor who, along with schools chief Michelle Rhee, was making…

Leonie Hermantin remembers that when she was growing up in New York, her father told her she couldn’t date any African-American boys or young men. The thing is, Hermantin’s skin is brown. She was born in Haiti and spent 12 years there before her family moved to the United States. Alexandra King, an African American,…

These days, “CBC” is more of an adjective than an acronym. Loosely translated, it means something like “being of the professional and black.” So consider the receptions, galas, mixers, after parties and after-after parties with the sobriquet “CBC” to have been vetted. Sort of like Facebook five years ago, those .pdf evites with the Capitol…