the browntable

Well, he didn’t leave Denmark empty-handed. After 14 hours of frenzied followup to two weeks of negotiation geared at creating a substantive plan to confront the threat of global climate change, president Barack Obama announced a comprehensive agreement between some of the world’s major polluters, including the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa.…

A MoveOn parody of the Senate Democrats’ lame response to Joe Lieberman’s antics about says it all… And if you’re forgetting how direly all of this matters to black America, by the way, here’s a reminder. But for all the anger around Lieberman, the fault lies in the White House. Many of us have criticized…

I keep asking myself what I did to deserve this. Twice in the past few weeks I’ve been the subject of a surprise attack by a well-known black newspaper columnist. Having my name dragged through the mud has been a very enlightening experience. The first to fire was Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald—my former teaching…

[Scroll down for update] Here we go again. In case you somehow missed it: Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman has decided he’d rather be a spoiler than a reformer. He’s declared he’ll filibuster any health reform bill that includes an expansion of Medicare to cover people as young as 55, despite the fact that he supported…

This weekend Houston made history, electing Anisse Parker the first openly gay mayor of a major American city. The Texan coup was a clear victory for advocates of civil rights and marriage equality, but also stands to erode the consistent—and incorrect—presumption that black Americans are reflexively anti-gay. Parker won the runoff election with nearly 54…

Fresh off a legislative victory that will provide up to $6 billion dollars in funding targeted toward financial relief in black America, the Congressional Black Caucus kept the pressure on the White House and the rest of the Congress to create jobs for American minorities. “Our community is bleeding,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee during…

The New York Times Magazine has released its annual “Year in Ideas” package—alphabetically analyzing such interesting new developments as man-made greenery and bicycle highways. In the “Os” there is, of course, our current president, Barack Obama. The entry related to him, however, explores a trend that’s become known in social science circles as “stereotype threat”—lower…

Accepting the 109th Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway before an expectant world public, President Barack Obama delivered a thoughtful and nuanced speech about the reasons for war and the limits of peace. The Nobel Committee awarded the honor, previously granted to leaders of populist, nonviolent movements such as Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela and Martin…

So, The New Republic’s John McWhorter sees a “certain crowd” that just isn’t giving the pre-post-racial era a chance. He takes me and Jenée Desmond-Harris to task for our bi-biracial evaluation of the “Cablinasian” thing in the context of the Tiger Woods scandal. Of Tiger Woods and race he writes, “an America in which a…

As a quick followup to my story today about the squabbling in Copenhagen over climate aid for poor nations who have contributed the least, but are poised to experience the worst side effects of climate change, more news from Denmark about where the US stands: “I actually completely reject the notion of a debt or…