Politics

It’s easy to ignore the ho-hum routines in a city like Washington, D.C.—a town that hosts conferences and conventions of some sort every single day, four or five times a day, it seems. But a town-hall meeting at this week’s 30th Annual Conference and Exposition of the National Black MBA Association offered timely insight into…

The National Organization for Women’s recent endorsement of Barack Obama ordinarily would not be such a big deal. Even though the organization endorsed Hillary Clinton in the primaries, it makes sense that the group would channel its energy to the Democratic nominee. Still, with all the tension around gender and race that spilled over during…

The Republican Party has finally found the outer edge of political cynicism; it’s located in Macomb County, Mich. Operatives there have figured out an upside to the foreclosure crisis roiling black neighborhoods: It enables mass voter-registration challenges and thereby offers a powerful opportunity to suppress the vote in Democrat-leaning districts. An enterprising journalist for the…

I am ready! When asked, I will not blink! Ladies and gentlemen, I humbly submit to you the next vice president of these United States, moi. Hey, a week ago, that would have been ludicrous and laughable. But in the wake of Gov. Sarah Palin’s titanic interview on ABC last week, this doesn’t seem that…

A few weeks after I moved into my condo in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, I saw a group of black men—ages from 20s to 50s—standing in front of my building. As I unloaded my groceries, I introduced myself as the new gal on the block. They seemed genuinely shocked at the neighborly…

Now that we’re in the home stretch of an unexpectedly competitive presidential race, it’s easy to get caught in the weeds of poll numbers and day-to-day horserace analysis. Who’s ahead today? Was that an exploitable gaffe? Was that advertisement a lie? These are the questions dominating news rooms, chat rooms and many living rooms across…

I can’t wait for Nov. 4. It’s not just because I’ll finally be casting a ballot in my first presidential election (though, don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty friggin’ stoked about it). But really, I’m in tip-toe anticipation of that first Tuesday in November, because I’m hoping, hoping hard, that on Election Day, all the…

I don’t know why anyone—myself included—ever let themselves think that a black man could run for president of the United States without igniting the sort of racial backlash we’re witnessing in the current campaign. I don’t know why anyone—myself included—ever believed that the Republican Party would forego its time-tested, coded appeals to prejudice and character assassination…

Unless you’ve been under a rock (or a hurricane) the last three days, you know about Wall Street’s meltdown. What many people don’t get is exactly what impact it might have on their personal finances. That’s understandable since it’s easier to believe that what happens to rich investment bankers is unrelated to our own efforts…

I’m an Alaskan. I grew up in Wasilla. Sarah Palin was my mayor. She explored the idea of banning books at the library where my parents taught me how to read. There have been many interesting pieces of journalism introducing my gun-toting, moose burger-eating former neighbors to the rest of the country, and most have…