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Dayo — Obama Presser
Covers the White House and Washington for The Root. Follow her on Twitter.
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Exactly Wright for Obama
Here is a radical notion: this is exactly what Barack Obama needed. Clearly, he needed to stiff-arm Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but more than that he needed to show some outrage and maybe even a little bit of rage. He needed to show that he is capable of action when action is what is called for.…
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'The Abstinence Teacher'
There is nothing particularly “black” about The Abstinence Teacher. Tom Perrotta’s new novel does not have any significant black characters. It is set in the kind of upper-middle-class suburban environment where the minorities are Indians or Persians rather than African Americans. And while a church plays a major role in the story, it’s a non-denominational,…
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An African Problem in the Heart of Europe
Diaryatou Bah was just eight years old when she went through the most traumatic experience of her life. “A woman brought me into the bush with my grandmother and her sister-in-law,” she recalls. “They took off the red loincloth I was wearing, placed leaves on my face and caught my hands and feet. Then the…
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Charlayne Hunter-Gault's Reporter's Notebook
I am out of Africa and into Singapore—a country mostly off my radar screen—except when I am visiting Francis Daniels, the father of my godson, Themba. To Francis, Singapore’s former Prime Minister, Lee Kwan Yew is a kind of icon who invariably comes up in conversations about what Africa needs to do to get out…
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The Wright Answer
For a while at the National Press Club, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was going along fine. But there was a point—and you can see it with the sound muted—where he started to answer questions and flew off the rails. I know a lot of Old Black Folks doing that Wright Thing: spouting off in public…
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Not a Chance, Scalia
In 1994, when Marion Barry was re-elected mayor of Washington D.C. following his troubles with crack cocaine, he famously challenged the many whites in the city to “get over” the results of the election by working with him. Barry, the first chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and very successful D.C. politician, was…
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An Open Letter to Michelle Obama
Dear Michelle, Can Barack please have a cigarette? No, stop right there, maybe you don’t get it: the future of the free world depends on it. Barack looks tired, and he’s been awful on TV. I think he’s bitter, bitter about not being able to have a cigarette. Cigarettes got him this far…can he please…
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Frayed Bootstraps in the Black Mecca
Early last year I was called for jury duty. I headed to the court building in downtown Atlanta, semi-grateful for the reprieve from admin meetings and hoping to get some grading done — until I wandered into the wrong courtroom and was stunned by what I saw. The room was completely filled with black males,…
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Wright Prophet, Wrong Direction
Reverend Jeremiah Wright has spent the last several days carefully placing himself within the prophetic tradition of African American religion. I attempted to place him in this same context here on The Root when I explained that he, like the biblical Jeremiah, is among the truth tellers who regularly warn the government that divine destruction…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
