Politics

It’s been amusing but not necessarily edifying, to watch Barack Obama’s foes and friends attempt to define his presidency before he has even been sworn in. Right-wing commentators reassure themselves that his victory somehow confirms that the U.S. remains a “center-right nation.” Their counterparts on the left debate whether he should model himself more on Franklin…

Nov. 24, 2008—The image of the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. standing on the lawn at Grant Park in Chicago, tears streaming down   his face as he listened to America’s first black president address thousands of adoring supporters, is sure to be one of the iconic images of the historic election It was a poignant…

Nov. 21, 2008—Race in America was the unavoidable topic at the center of the historic presidential election that ended with Barack Obama being chosen as the 44th president of the United States and the first black person to hold the job. It was a wide-ranging discussion that demonstrated just how much the country had changed…

Nov. 21, 2008—Being black in South Carolina is not the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Until recently, my sister and I had two white cleaning ladies. And it seems so humorously ironic. My grandmother, the first in our family to move from the South to the North, made a living cleaning the homes of white…

Nov. 20, 2008—My erstwhile African-American-studies-minored self would love nothing more than to publish a dissertation on why this piece in Salon, written by Erin Aubry Kaplan of the Los Angeles Times, is destructive, superficial and historically unsound. But what would be the point? I would say how dare you continue the objectification of a black woman,…

Nov. 19, 2008—The lingering tension between gays and lesbians and the African-American community over the passage of California’s Proposition 8—banning same-sex marriage—isn’t a laughing matter, but it is absurd. It has all the makings of a Tyler Perry movie starring the casts of Big Love and The L Word. Diary of a Mad Black Mormon Lesbian…

Nov. 19, 2008—Having already gone through my—now regretted—Obama tantrums in July (and on this Web site), I do not want to hear about anyone else’s. Please try to get over yours as soon as possible. Let’s clear up a few things. The right is all in a tizzy because it is trying to project itself…

There were several unforgettable moments in the Obama campaign—Barack’s impassioned speech about race, the DNC finale at Invesco, Madelyn Dunham’s death just before her grandson became president-elect—but none meant more to me than a two-minute bit of tape, a simple but monumental exchange between Michelle Obama and Soledad O’Brien. In her interview with Michelle, Soledad…

For generations, The Mommy Wars have largely skipped black women. For most of us, staying at home to raise our children full-time was never a choice. Our families’ survival depended on our wages—often earned from nurturing and caring for white families. With the rise of a post-civil rights generation, a critical mass of high-powered black…

Michelle Obama has loudly signaled that she intends to be entirely her own kind of first lady; her evident independence will bring her lots of attention, but Mrs. O may be a huge branding opportunity and not just for the Obama administration. In “Selling Michelle” on TheBigMoney, Lauren Sandler looks at the marketing possibilities that…