Politics

Here is a radical notion: this is exactly what Barack Obama needed. Clearly, he needed to stiff-arm Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but more than that he needed to show some outrage and maybe even a little bit of rage. He needed to show that he is capable of action when action is what is called for.…

For a while at the National Press Club, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was going along fine. But there was a point—and you can see it with the sound muted—where he started to answer questions and flew off the rails. I know a lot of Old Black Folks doing that Wright Thing: spouting off in public…

In 1994, when Marion Barry was re-elected mayor of Washington D.C. following his troubles with crack cocaine, he famously challenged the many whites in the city to “get over” the results of the election by working with him. Barry, the first chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and very successful D.C. politician, was…

Dear Michelle, Can Barack please have a cigarette? No, stop right there, maybe you don’t get it: the future of the free world depends on it. Barack looks tired, and he’s been awful on TV. I think he’s bitter, bitter about not being able to have a cigarette. Cigarettes got him this far…can he please…

Reverend Jeremiah Wright has spent the last several days carefully placing himself within the prophetic tradition of African American religion. I attempted to place him in this same context here on The Root when I explained that he, like the biblical Jeremiah, is among the truth tellers who regularly warn the government that divine destruction…

I’m indebted to Sam Stein of The Huffington Post for unearthing this YouTube video of Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell in 1997 showering praises on….drum roll, please…MINISTER LOUIS FARRAKHAN! Yes, Louis Farrakhan, the same Louis Farrakhan about whose links to Barack Obama Hillary Clinton and George Stephanopoulos made such a fuss a few weeks ago. I’ve…

It’s a reasonable question, given the potentially catastrophic damage he wreaked on the Illinois Senator’s White House aspirations with his bombastic performance at the National Press Club this morning. At the precise moment when Obama is facing questions about his ability to connect with white working class voters, Wright chose to put himself back into…

For Whom the Bell Tolls (Part II) “Perchance, he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him” – John Donne Part one of this essay appeared as a blog on Blackprof during the fall of 2007. At that time, the ‘Bell’ in the title referred…

PBS is airing the first extended interview with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright tonight. Bill Moyer will pummel him with hard questions about his patriotism and the politics of the pulpit, and Wright won’t back away, instead standing firm on his principles. And he should. When I heard that Wright was a UCC pastor, I wasn’t…

And God said let there be peace. Thus, in the face of anguish most would find unimaginable, the family of Sean Bell and the people of Queens County gathered early Friday to share solidarity as much as to point fingers. Tensions ran high outside the State Supreme Court in Queens after Justice Arthur Cooperman rendered…