Politics
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Bending Toward Justice
Ben Jealous is an odd fit for the position of race leader. He’s not a civil rights icon. He’s not a trailblazing elected official. Hell, he’s not even a netroots pioneer. But most of all, he’s not a very good preacher—his oratory is more strained than inspired, loaded with colloquialisms that sound dutiful rather than…
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The Root and Black Web 2.0 Review 'Black in America 2'
Are we living in a post-racial America? What does being black in America mean today? Join The Root staff and readers as we screen CNN’s “Black in America 2” and host an interactive panel discussion where 20-something professionals in politics, law and medicine respond to your questions and reactions from the show. The Root and…
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Now I'm Pissed
I am not easily angered. But as I watched the second day of confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor, I grew closer and closer to the stereotype. Angry-black-woman syndrome—hard to get along with, excitable, overly aggressive, difficult, a bully and a badgerer—began to set in. The subject of my ire? The unbelievably condescending questioning by…
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Why Sen. Graham Got It Wrong
Sen. Lindsey Graham’s brief on behalf of beleaguered white men was delivered with a honeyed tongue and a swift blow from the first day of the confirmation hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. His argument is instilled in his central thesis: If a white man had made the same statements as those made by Judge Sotomayor…
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No Empathy Debate for Regina Benjamin
When Hurricane Katrina flooded much of the Gulf Coast in 2005, Dr. Regina Benjamin’s rural health clinic in a south Alabama shrimping village was just one of the casualties, but despite all the chaos, the doctor’s patients didn’t suffer without medical care. Benjamin set up shop on the stage at the Bayou La Batre Community…
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Hearings Through the Looking Glass
“I am a Brooklynite, born and bred—a first-generation American on my father’s side, barely second-generation on my mother’s.” —Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg I am who I am in the first place because of my parents . . . My father was brought to this country as an infant. . . He grew up in poverty.…
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Obama Slated to Toss Out First Pitch at All-Star Game
According to NewsOne (via the AP): “President Barack Obama will be in the Fox broadcast booth for Tuesday night’s All-Star game. Fox spokesman Lou D’Ermilio said Monday that Obama will join Joe Buck and Tim McCarver for the telecast from Busch Stadium but that the inning had not yet been determined. Obama is scheduled to…
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Regina Benjamin Tapped as Surgeon General
From CNN: “President Obama announced Monday he has chosen Dr. Regina Benjamin, a family practice doctor from the Gulf Coast, to serve as surgeon general. The rural family physician has long provided medical care on the Gulf Coast. In 1990, she founded Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in the fishing village of Bayou La…
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Emotion Denied
It’s after midnight. You’re a summer intern at the right-wing American Solutions foundation drinking your fourth room-temperature Honest Tea agave maté of the day out of an old Mountain Dew bottle so that your colleagues don’t mistake you for some kind of new-age Republican peacenik. You’re trying to figure out how to turn Judge Sonia…
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Philly Swim Club: 'Sorry for the Racis..er..Mix Up. Still Wanna Swim?'
From CNN: “A suburban Philadelphia swim club has invited children from a largely minority day-care center to come back after a June reversal that fueled allegations of racism against the club, a spokeswoman said Sunday. The development came during a hastily called Sunday afternoon meeting of the Valley Club in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania. Club members…