Politics

I would classify myself as an intensely proud black man. And I feel completely comfortable saying that Robert Downey Jr. deserves his Oscar nod. Denying Tropic Thunder’s smart satire simply because the artists involved are white is simplistic and short-sighted. Frankly, I find Tyler Perry’s use of trite black American archetypes equally as problematic as blackface.…

There is an old saying, or there should be, that God looks after fools and Democrats. Look at Roland Burris, the political has-been and perennial loser who got one of the all-time greatest second chances in American politics and blew it by lying under oath to a state impeachment panel. Still, Burris is a U.S.…

President Barack Obama’s first prime-time news conference played on a small television monitor above my son’s hospital bed, as the 24-pound toddler fought for his life. As a Washington journalist, normally, I’d be itching to be there at the White House. But on that day, Obama’s words faded into the background as I looked at…

Living in America – eye to eye, station to station Living in America – hand to hand, across the nation Living in America – got to have a celebration… You might not be looking for the promised land, but you might find it anyway. —James Brown, “Living in America” Black patriotism has always been a…

There are cynical luxuries that come with being black in this country, like the ability to shrug off the dime-store rites of patriotism. We’ve seen America through a perpetually raised eyebrow, the yeah, whatever perspective that comes with the terrain on our side of American history. And here lies Presidents Day. Like July 4th, Thomas…

If you’re a through-and-through progressive, or maybe even the Speaker of the House, and you’re still counting on a far-left agenda from President Obama, you should think again.  If you’re part of the Republican leadership, or a maybe a rank-and-file Rush Limbaugh “Dittohead,” waiting for Obama to enact a flurry of “socialist” regulations on the…

On Feb. 12, 1909, the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, a “call” went out inviting all “believers in democracy” to a national conference dedicated to “the renewal of the struggle for civil and political liberty.” Thus began the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The impetus for its founding occurred five months…

Just before Christmas 1776, colonist Thomas Paine published the first of a series of essays on early American values that would come to be known as “The American Crisis.” In it, Paine, a strong voice for the American colonies’ independence from Britain, wrote of setbacks on the path to liberty as “the times that try…

We heard barking as we approached the four-bedroom bungalow on a tidy suburban cul-de-sac near West Palm Beach. A 30-ish white man with sandy brown hair opened the door. “Is there a dog?” my mom asked with her Caribbean lilt. He caged the dog. We stepped inside, and my mother delivered the grim news: She…

Now that the inaugural celebrations are over, we’ve moved into that difficult phase of the presidency called governing. To say that President Barack Obama faces unprecedented challenges is practically an understatement. At the very least, he faces greater challenges than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. On the international front alone, he must grapple with…