the browntable

Congrats CNN, on your “swagga” segment FAIL. We all know that mainstream news can be stiff by nature and necessity, but that’s a reality that exists because, more often than not, attempts to be ‘hip’ and relevant tend to fall flat on their face. It’s pretty clear by his on camera demeanor that correspondent T.J. Holmes was…

Now that the first lady of the United States is past her first 100 days in “office,” a host of profiles and tributes and pop theses on her appeal have started to appear: The NEW YORK TIMES wrote about how Obama’s staff has maintained tight-fisted control over her public image; while the WASHINGTON POST describes…

The hubbub around the swine flu is entirely appropriate: It’s a fast moving, unknown virus that is proving to be deadly when untreated. That said, it also reinforces a frustrating truth: A whole lot of other public health problems persist only because we don’t care enough to stop them. So far, the swine flu has…

The official White House photostream on the website Flickr boasts hundreds of extraordinary photographs of president Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office. The candids—of the Obama girls playing on the swingset with their mother, the president rocking out at his Super Bowl party, and relaxing with some birthday cake at an Oval Office birthday…

The United States officially enshrined the legacy of barrier-breaking lecturer and civil rights activist Sojourner Truth today, unveiling a memorial that will sit, like those of so many other famous men and women of American history, in Emancipation Hall of the US Capitol Visitors’ Center. Truth was the first black person, male or female, to successfully bring suit in US court—for the return…

This afternoon—between Specter defections, Clinton-Obama joint appearances and a rare Tony Bennett sighting, one of the strangest I’ve spent on Capitol Hill—it’s worth looking miles from the Beltway, to Austin, TX, where Vice President Joe Biden toured the National Domestic Violence Hotline Center. Joined by Austin Mayor Will Wynn, Biden surveyed the complex that hosts…

A coda to this phenomenal Earth Week at THE ROOT: On Earth Day itself, Attorney General Eric Holder took time out from pointed questions about torture memos and prosecutions of Bush administration officials, and celebrated like an increasing number of black Americans: By getting down with nature. After digging and raking (a bit awkwardly) alongside…

Covers the White House and Washington for The Root. Follow her on Twitter.

Our college degrees aren’t saving us, after all. Here’s a whopper from March unemployment data: College educated blacks have lost jobs at twice the rate of their white counterparts during the recession. According to the Economic Policy Institute, joblessness among the black educated class shot up 4.5 percent in the past two years, reaching 7.2…

This Earth Day, it’s pretty clear that if we humans want to keep chilling on this planet, there’s a lot of work to do. The 9 billion person question: Are the right people dong it? My friend Brentin Mock has write a piece for PARLOUR magazine on Van Jones, newly tapped as a green jobs…