Politics

Quincy Jones, bandleader, composer, producer and Grammy-laden powerhouse of the entertainment world, was on CNN on Inauguration Day, getting personal and global at the same time. The much-traveled Jones had been back to his old stomping ground, Garfield High School in Seattle. There, he chatted up a group of students and discovered, to his dismay, that they…

Memo to William Jelani Cobb.Re: Your proposal that “if Hillary Clinton receives the Democratic Party nomination, African Americans should consider voting for John McCain.”Knee-grow,  pul-eeeze!  Your column on The Root ranks as the most ridiculous political idea any Negro has put forth my since my brother-in-law decided to support Clarence Thomas on the grounds that,…

The question per what is going on in the Republican Party can be summed up succinctly: the conservative base – in particular the evangelical Christian contingent of same – has no viable candidate left in the presidential nominee selection contest – but they do have a choice to which they strenuously object. Accordingly, for Republicans…

There’s been a lot of talk about women and their choices since Super Tuesday, when African American women overwhelmingly voted for Sen. Barack Obama, while white women picked Sen. Hillary Clinton. Some pundits automatically concluded that “race trumped gender” among black women. I hate this analysis because it relegates black women to junior-partner status in…

Watching Sen. Barack Obama trounce Sen. Hillary Clinton week after week in primary sweeps this month has made it easy for his supporters to imagine him cakewalking his way to the White House. After all, the man has been leaving fans breathless as he rides a wave of momentum from one state to another. Maybe…

The old saying holds that in politics you don’t have to win, you just have to not lose. But what the saying doesn’t tell you is that sometimes what looks like victory is actually a step backward. And that will be the case for black folk should Hillary Clinton win the Democratic Party nomination and…

Oprah Winfrey has been widely criticized by white feminists who saw her decision to support Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton as a betrayal that put race before gender. Oprah’s pointed response spoke for many black women whose loyalty to gender and race is also being questioned — and tested. “You know, after Iowa, there were…

In a recent article on Sen. Ted Kennedy’s powerful endorsement of Barack Obama, New York Times columnist David Brooks suggests that Baby Boomers who developed their political identities in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and who have hardened over decades of political conflict, are intrinsically devoid of hope. Instead, the Camelot mystique of the…

After much prompting by women, the national media, and the African American community, I, speaking on behalf of “my own,” am now comfortable in declaring the candidate I support to be the 44th president of the United States. As I am frequently reminded, I am black and I am a woman. And, given African Americans’…

From the beginning of his presidential campaign, which unofficially began with the release of his second book The Audacity of Hope, Senator Barack Obama has been positioned as an underdog against the Clinton machine. Now, with polls showing him in a virtual dead heat with Sen. Hillary Clinton, the media has constructed his early success…