Politics

  • Seeing Black and Seeing Red

    I loved living in Cambridge, Mass., except when I didn’t. And when I didn’t was when I had left my apartment late at night to walk to the all-night corner grocery store with just that $10 bill stuffed into my pocket, having left my wallet on the bookcase in the hallway. Then, strolling along, soon…

  • VIDEO: Liz Cheney Down with the Birthers

    Liz Cheney thinks people are made uncomfortable by Obama because he seems reluctant to defend America. But didn’t he have Navy snipers buck three Somali pirates to save an American sea captain of no particular account? Isn’t he still waterboarding and indefinitely imprisoning people like your pops, Liz? Isn’t he applying his gangster in relative…

  • Beige in America

    Come on, Soledad. We’re about to see our second “Black in America” series in two years, and it’s only fair to surmise that after the way Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings went down, plans for “Brown in America” will soon be underway. But before you start production on “Brown” or start making plans for “Black…

  • Joe Jackson: I Never Raised a (Pimp) Hand to Michael!

    When in doubt, bring up the slavery days.

  • Lawyer's Statement on the Arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr.

    UPDATE: The disorderly conduct charges against Henry Louis Gates Jr. were dropped on Tuesday. Statement on Behalf of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. — by Charles Ogletree This brief statement is being submitted on behalf of my client, friend, and colleague, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. This is a statement concerning the arrest of Professor Gates.…

  • The Root's Editor-in-Chief Arrested

    Henry Louis Gates Jr., the nation’s pre-eminent black scholar, is accusing Cambridge police of racism after he was arrested while trying to force open the locked front door of his home near Harvard University. Cambridge police were called to the home Thursday afternoon after a woman reported seeing a man “wedging his shoulder into the…

  • Buying Time on the Economy

    Barack Obama has been president for exactly six months, and we’ll have to wait a while to find out whether all the frenetic activity in these opening rounds of his presidency will amount to anything over the long haul. There is no argument that the administration and the president have both been busy and ambitious;…

  • Obama-thon '09: The Health Care Edition

    From the Washington Post: “Six months into his presidency, Barack Obama may have no greater test of his ability to translate personal popularity into a successful legislative agenda than the upcoming two weeks. With skepticism about the president’s health-care reform effort mounting on Capitol Hill — even within his own party — the White House…

  • Filling a Black Hole

    Last week, National Black Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Harry Alford gave Sen. Barbara Boxer the business over their disagreements about the climate bill before her committee. In testimony before the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, Alford admitted that he spoke “not as an economist” and as “not a climate change expert,” but…

  • NASA, We Have a Problem

    Forty years ago this week, a man walked on the moon. The ultimate prize in the decade-long “space race,” the two-and-a-half-hour moonwalk by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin remains a testament to American exceptionalism, technological prowess and nationalist fervor. And face it, it’s pretty thrilling to watch. In honor of meeting the scientific challenge that…