Politics

To our readers, Less than a month ago, I agreed to take over as the managing editor of The Root. I am very excited at the opportunity to work with Editor-in-chief Henry Louis Gates Jr. and our great team of editors and writers. I am also awed by the challenge. The role of African Americans…

Democratic Defend TSA Nominee Southers Democratic U.S. Senators have come to the defense of Erroll Southers, President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration. The nominee, a former FBI agent, had come under fire for inconsistent statements to Congress about accessing the criminal record of his estranged wife’s boyfriend. The inconsistencies were first…

(Translated by Achy Obejas) Havana—Provecta, in Spanish, means “old, mature.” (With a certain dignity.) For a person, 51 is a provecta age, especially in terms of maturity (just tell me about it, now that I’ve surpassed that threshold and can feel myself rusting). The Cuban revolutionary project has reached 51 years of existence and, for…

Can America catch a bad guy? Any bad guy? For years, the Bush Administration was under fire for letting Osama Bin Ladin slip through its fingers. Now the Obama Administration is catching flak for failing to nail the Underwear Bomber. Driven by Republican accusations of laxity about security, the Obama Administration has gone on the…

THE NEW SECURITY DEBATE Can America ever be safe? The Underwear Bomber has set off a new round of recrimination about the state of security in the U.S. The fact that Umar Farouk Abdulmullatab’s own father went to the U.S. Embassy to express concern about his son’s militant leanings suggest another missed opportunity to stop…

This has been a decade of racial progress and setbacks. From the curb, it may be hard to tell the difference. So as a public service, I give you…. 2000-2010: A Race Odyssey: • After the tragedy of 9/11, Arab American stereotypes morph from harmless convenient store owner to new American nigger. The Simpsons’ Apuh…

Nine years ago, on September 11th, 2001, a well-coordinated team of 19 al-Qaeda terrorists who had infiltrated the United States months before highjacked four airplanes, crashing two into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon, killing nearly three thousand people. On Christmas Day 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to detonate an explosive…

If the 21st century’s opening decade has revealed anything about American life, it’s this: We’re a nation that’s much better at breaking things than fixing them. We opened the epoch by thrashing about the globe, looking for something to smash in reaction to 9/11. We’ve closed it by wallowing in the inevitable wreckage of our…

SAY NO TO NO ON DRUGS? Will common sense about the war on drugs emerge from Mexico? For several years, the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderón has battled the illegal traffic in drugs with a strategy defined and supported by the United States. He has deployed large numbers of troops in Ciudad Juarez, a…

On Christmas Day, a clatter, a puff of smoke and a brief, terrifying flame: Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian passenger on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, had allegedly tried to blow up his airplane. Others aboard the airliner quickly subdued the man, a former University College of London student who…