Politics

Covers the White House and Washington for The Root. Follow her on Twitter.

Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson is spilling some of the president’s beans regarding his African policies in the future. In Washington Monday, Carson told the African American Unity Caucus that Obama’s African policy would focus on four key issues. According to Voice of America, those issues are: 1.Promoting and strengthening democratic…

The First Family calls on Americans to lend a hand. Do you agree that “a summer of service initiative” helps to kickstart an economic recovery?

Who’s your daddy? Barack Obama, that’s who. We haven’t seen black family role modeling like this since the Huxtables. Actually, Cliff and Clair couldn’t touch the Obamas—they didn’t have Bo. Still, the president’s not content with his own nuclear family bliss. He really, really wants you to have a great dad, too. But the problem…

From the mouth of Rev. Wiley Drake, a minister in the Southern Baptist church, regarding the president: “If he does not turn to God and does not turn his life around, I am asking God to enforce imprecatory prayers that are throughout the Scripture that would cause him death.” According to the Baltimore Afro American,…

1 Cite as: 557 U. S. ____ (2009) Opinion of THOMAS, J. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES No. 08–322 NORTHWEST AUSTIN MUNICIPAL UTILITY DIS- TRICT NUMBER ONE, APPELLANT v. ERIC H.HOLDER, JR., ATTORNEY GENERAL, ET AL. ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA [June 22, 2009] JUSTICE THOMAS,…

It would be difficult to overstate the significance and revelatory import of the Supreme Court’s long-awaited decision in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District (NAMUD) v. Holder —the case that challenged the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. We learn that the conservative plurality on the court—minus Justice ClarenceThomas—has a pretty good sense…

The story of Michelle and Barack Obama has been drawn as one about black achievement, the triumph of tradition, racial healing and just plain romance. But their story has also, from day one, been a political one. It’s been that way since their first official date 20 years ago, when the couple went to see…

Barack Obama enjoys his relationship with the media and certainly uses it to his advantage. But it’s reaching ‘Fatal Attraction’-like levels and if the groupie love trend from the media doesn’t stop soon, it’ll only be a matter of time before he comes home to find his pet rabbit boiling on the stove. The sometimes-troubling…

When Do the Right Thing was released 20 years ago, a generation of black writers and intellectuals became instantly radicalized by Spike Lee and Public Enemy’s vision of black America. Their fist-pumping black nationalist slingshots, along with The Autobiography of Malcolm X, were the perfect antidote for the isolation and alienation many black youth felt…