world

(The Root) — No visit to Kenya is complete without calling on Sarah Obama, President Obama’s remarkably sharp 90-year-old step-grandmother, the woman who raised his father, Barack Obama Sr. Since the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, Westerners have trooped to her door, eager to learn about the president’s African heritage from the woman he calls “Granny.”…

(The Root) — Slavery is bad. Hadn’t you heard? The vast majority of African Americans with Southern ancestry are the descendants of slaves. Didn’t you know? And Michelle Obama, the first lady of these United States, is no exception. Were you not familiar with that narrative? If not, the Spanish publication Magazine de Fuera de…

(The Root) — When South African police attacked black platinum miners on strike last week — shooting dead 34 and injuring 78 — the nation was suddenly reminded how some things haven’t changed since the end of apartheid two decades ago. Headlines thundered “war“ and “massacre,” describing the violence that occurred when some 3,000 angry…

(The Root) — The news this week that Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi died — of a “sudden infection,” according to state TV — did not exactly come as a shock. For weeks there were rumors that he was ailing. When I was in Washington, D.C., recently, taking cabs to and from the Convention Center…

Elon James White is a writer and satirist and host of the award-winning video and radio series This Week in Blackness. Listen Monday to Thursday at 1:30 p.m. EST at TWIB.FM and watch at TV.TWIB.ME/LIVE. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Tumblr.

(The Root) — “The Star-Spangled Banner” has already played more than three dozen times at the Olympics as American athletes have taken gold medals. Britain’s “God Save the Queen” has had its own hit run at the London Games, with more than two dozen podium renditions. But for more than half of the African nations,…

(The Root) — Marathoner Guor Marial has said that he used to hate running. That’s because, he says, growing up in Southern Sudan, he used to run for his life. During the country’s decadeslong civil war between the Northern government and Southern rebels, Marial, 28, saw many family members die at the hands of federal…

(The Root) — Michael Johnson came to Finsbury Park when he first moved to London from Jamaica 42 years ago. He remembers it as a place where he expended teenage energy — and most importantly, a venue where its athletics programs were free. Over the decades, thousands of children like him have come and gone,…

(The Root) — At the International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C., this week, much of the focus has been on Africa. And rightly so: It has been hit hardest by the disease. In Africa, 23 million people are living with the virus, or 68 percent of the world’s HIV-positive population. In some African countries as…

Editor’s note: On July 10 in New York City, The Root was honored with the opportunity to sit down with Ghana’s then-Vice President John Dramani Mahama, who was doing a book tour for his new memoir, My First Coup d’Etat: And Other True Stories From the Lost Decades of Africa. Mahama had written for The…