Politics

It’s interesting how some numbers don’t make the news. Friday’s announcement that unemployment in the U.S. had dropped to 9.5 percent was welcome, even if the gains turn out fragile or illusory. Most of the early news stories left out an even bigger number: black unemployment at 16.5 percent, black male unemployment a whopping 17.6…

The employment statistics for January are out—and the jobless rate for America now sits at 9.7 percent. While the country lost 20,000 jobs last month, this figure is a slight improvement over December’s rate of 10 percent, and a five month low. The United States gross domestic product grew by a healthy 5.7 percent in…

This is it. The election of Barack Obama may be the last, best chance for America to salvage our mortally wounded political system.  Most rational politicians and commentators from both parties know that the legitimacy of the American political system is at a dangerously low ebb in the eyes of most of the public.  Pressured…

As some of you have already noticed, we have installed a new system on The Root to manage reader comments.  It should make it easier for you to log in and to comment on articles that appear on the site. You will be able to log into The Root with either your Root log-in or…

NEW ORLEANS—Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu appears to have routed five major challengers in today’s mayoral primary, riding extraordinary biracial support to claim a rare first-round victory.  With 90 of the city’s 366 precincts counted, Landrieu had 64 percent of the vote, according to WWL-TV. His closest challenger, businessman Troy Henry, had 15 percent, according to the…

This weekend, voters in the New Orleans Democratic Party primary will begin the process of electing the city’s first new mayor since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. The race has been heated since the beginning—now 12 candidates are vying to replace the discredited C. Ray Nagin as head of the city government. It’s a crowded…

MINORITIES WARY OF CALIFORNIA REDISTRICTING For the first time, voting districts for California’s Legislature will not be drawn behind closed doors in the backrooms of the state Capitol. Instead, a first-in-the-nation citizen commission will do the job, and thousands of everyday Californians are jostling to serve on the panel, reports the Los Angeles Times. But…

It’s been a long time since I carefully counted the speakers and panelists at academic conferences on civil rights to determine how many scholars of color were included, but I’ll admit that when I looked at the lineup for SCOTUSblog’s month-long “Race and the Supreme Court” series in commemoration of Black History Month, the lack…

Though it has the movie Glory and an exquisite memorial on Boston Common, the Massachusetts 54th Regiment does not have Civil War history on its side. Glory, the 1989 movie starring Denzel Washington, and The Civil War, the Ken Burns series first aired on public television in 1990, portray the Massachusetts 54th as the Army’s…

As Vince “Double Down” Vaughn might have said to President Barack Obama: “You’re money, baby—and you don’t even know it.” No sooner did Obama joke to a Nashua, N.H., crowd Tuesday that “You don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college,” than a bipartisan chorus of Nevada politicians…