Politics
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Health Care and What It Means To Be President
Remember when being the president just meant that you were “the decider”? This was the golden age of George W. Bush, when it really seemed like anyone—anyone—could be president. If we’re honest, it is only the model of the George W. Bush presidency that enables so many people to imagine that Sarah Palin could run…
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Van Jones Sets the Record Straight
Tonight’s NAACP Image Awards telecast isn’t just about recognizing black Hollywood. The group is giving its President’s Award to Van Jones, the erstwhile national “green jobs czar” who was forced out of the Obama administration last year after he became a lightning rod for right-wing ire. Jones, 41, may be “the most misunderstood man in…
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Rangel Broke Ethics Rules For Island Junkets With CBC Members
The House ethics committee has found that one of Congress’s most powerful black lawmakers violated House rules, but didn’t know it. Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Charlie Rangel (D, New York) violated House rules by failing to properly disclose financial details of trips to the Caribbean, according to senior congressional officials on Thursday. The…
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Will the Health Care Summit Pay Off for Obama?
Cantor versus Rangel. Boehner versus Biden. Getting health care done versus more of the same. The White House summit to debate health care reform is being characterized as a political cage match with the highest of stakes. But the meeting is also a story of Obama versus Obama. Throughout the debate over what is now…
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The Austin Plane Crash: White Man’s Anger, Black Man’s Death
So let me see if I have this straight. Joseph Stack, an engineer and anti-tax activist gets good and mad, burns his house to the ground, jumps into his private plane, flies it into The Echelon building housing federal offices in Austin, killing Vernon Hunter, a 67-year-old IRS worker and injuring 13 more. This act…
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Haiti's Development: A Human-Rights Approach
In the wake of the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti last month, thousands of its countrymen are reversing a trend that has dominated life in developing third world countries for decades—they are migrating back to the countryside, after having flocked to the cities in a desperate search for employment. What drove their urban flight was…
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Blacks and Education: What We Learn
In 1960, more than 40 percent of adult whites were high-school graduates compared to 23 percent of adult blacks. That’s nearly a 20 percent gap. Now, black and white high-school graduates are nearly the same—87 percent for whites and 83 percent for blacks. College Graduates In 1960, only 3.1 percent of adult black Americans graduated…
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The USDA and The Value of Black Land
Alphonso Hooks, a fourth-generation farmer in Shorter, Alab., was ambivalent about recent news that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) signed a $1.25 billion discrimination settlement with thousands of black farmers. The agreement, called Pigford II, was the second redressing of past USDA racial discrimination cases. Hooks says he got nothing in an earlier settlement.…
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Why Voting For Obama Was Like Buying Starbucks Coffee
In my recent book, Everything but the Coffee: Learning About America from Starbucks (University of California Press, 2009), I show how consumerism has oozed into every corner and crevice of American life and how we increasingly treat everything as a purchase. We seem to think that anything of value in life can be bought as…
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What I Saw at the Conservative Devolution
In 2003, Republicans attending the 30th anniversary of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) had much to celebrate: a solid majority in Congress, a conservative stalwart in George W. Bush and a war in Iraq coming down the chute. This year, the out-of-power American right convened once more. Panelists discussed “Going Rogue,” the dangers of…