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South African Runner's Gender Questioned
South African runner Caster Semenya is under investigation for her gender. The 18-year-old track and fielder won the 800-meter Women’s gold medal at the World Athletics Championship in Berlin yesterday. Semenya won with a record-breaking 1 minute, 55.54 seconds. That’s beyond impressive. I ran the 800-meter in high school and couldn’t break 2 minutes and…
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Reading List: The Cross-Cultural Edition
Travel across continents, countries, and cultures in this edition of Books on the Root’s Reading List. The Sound of Water By Sanjay Bahadur Atria, June 2009 The former director of the India Ministry of Coal takes on the treacherous and exploitative conditions of the Indian mining industry and humanizes the lives of workers and their…
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Lockerbie Bomber Being Allowed to Die in Libya
From CNN: Convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi is to be released and allowed to return to Libya on compassionate grounds, Scotland’s justice minister said Thursday. Al Megrahi, 57, is suffering from terminal prostate cancer. He was serving a life sentence for bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland,…
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Bravo's Southern Discomfort
You know you need a reality check when, on the one show meant to highlight the lives of women such as yourself—young(ish), glamorous and black—it’s the white chick with Mattel hair that you end up feeling sorry for. (Or better yet, sympathizing with.) And the women with the airbrushed smiles and the loud mouths seem…
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The Limits of 'Pragmatic' Politics
Few things are as grating as the polite jargon used to describe politicians caving in to corporate interests. “The politics of the possible,” for instance, has suddenly replaced “yes, we can” as Barack Obama has walked back a central plank of his presidential campaign—that he’d create a public insurance plan. If only the problems we…
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Color-Struck Covers
The word “whitewash” is rarely considered in a literary context, but Bloomsbury Children’s Books recently got an earful of the word. The publishing company made an unwise decision to publish the novel Liar, a story about a black woman, with a cover portraying a lily-white woman. As Felicia Pride of The Root noted on her…
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Mr. President, The People Who Voted for You Are Not Joking
Mr. President, when you say one thing and backpedal because some people might get their feelings hurt, the people who bought into your hope and change thing are going to put their shoe in you the fastest way they know how: A Twitter hashtag from your faithful constituents. Root pal Elon James White decided to…
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Don Hewitt, '60 Minutes' Creator, Dies at 86
From CNN: Television pioneer and longtime CBS executive Don Hewitt, the creator of “60 Minutes,” has died, the network said Wednesday. He was 86. Hewitt, who had been battling pancreatic cancer, died at his home in Bridgehampton, New York, surrounded by his family, CBS said. The winner of eight Emmy and two Peabody awards, Hewitt…
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Guilty Until Proven Innocent?
After years of heartbreak and disappointment, Troy Davis is finally getting a chance to have evidence heard in his case after being denied a fair trial since he was arrested almost two decades ago. It should never have taken the American justice system this long to act. Troy Davis was unjustly convicted and sentenced to…
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Time to Silence the Lambs
By now, you’ve probably already seen this clip of Rep. Barney Frank issuing a scathing rebuke to a woman comparing Barack Obama to Hitler at a Dartmouth, Mass., healthcare town hall. But a little refresher won’t hurt: For those of us who have long been yearning for a return to rational political discourse, it was…