Politics

One hundred and forty-seven years ago this week, with the Civil War raging around him, President Lincoln signed into law a bill that created the United States Department of Agriculture. He called it the “People’s Department,” in a tribute to the wide-ranging ambitions he held for it. Almost a century and a half later, the…

I am a descendant of Cherokee Freedmen, the former slaves owned by the Cherokees and a smaller number of free blacks who lived among the tribe before the end of the Civil War. So watching the PBS series We Shall Remain, which aired last month, I empathized with Native Americans and silently condemned the white…

Fed up with the unrest that threatens to throw the country into the kind of violent turmoil that followed the 2007 elections, a group of women in Kenya took matters into their own hands. The Women’s Development Organization spearheaded a weeklong strike in which they called on Kenyan women to withhold sex from their husbands…

WSJ: No Free Chicken, but Still Cool: Eight Tuition-Free Colleges WP: Homeownership Among Immigrants Remains Steady: Obama Yaaalll! NYT: Minority Gains in Homeownership Erodes: Um…Obama, Y’all? YH: Tim Brown Says Raiders’ Al Davis Hates Black Athletes from Notre Dame, All 19 of Them NC7: AMBER Alert Still Out for Missing North Carolina Boy ATC: A…

On The Tavis Smiley Show recently, British-Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A turned the much-needed spotlight onto the troubles in her native country. She described the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka as “genocide.” And said her own minority Tamil community was getting little public sympathy for their plight because the Bush administration had labeled them as “terrorists.”…

The Obama administration has signaled its intention to begin discussions on comprehensive immigration reform over the coming year; crucial to that debate will be the sister issue of integration. While most Americans agree that properly integrating immigrant groups is an important objective, few know exactly what “integration” means or how to achieve it. The old…

As I sat in George and Veronica Gallon’s kitchen, listening to them describe their months-long tussle with the mortgage industry, I couldn’t avoid the obvious conclusion: They’d made bad choices. Listening to them describe each small step along the road to foreclosure was like watching a predictable horror film. Put that promotional flyer down! No,…

On Saturday, South Africa will roll out its red carpet and put on the dog, as only it can. If the past is anything to go by, there will be plenty of pageantry and poetry and a few staid speeches as big planes fly in salute over the old Union Buildings in Pretoria. It will…

Veronica Gallon went and got her gun. This was just the kind of thing she and her husband, George, had left the north Jacksonville ghettos to avoid: some guy banging and rattling the door in the middle of the night, like a crazed killer or God knows what. Veronica wasn’t having it. So she grabbed…

Detroiters go to the polls Tuesday to elect a mayor to finish out Kwame Kilpatrick’s unfinished second term—and then they’ll get ready to do it all over again.  The prize for the winner is a city in distress. Crime is up; schools are down; and unemployment is at 20 percent. Last year, the Detroit Lions…