March 9, 2009 — If anyone should be skeptical of New Deal policies, it should be black folks, not Republicans.

Posted at The Root.

It is often forgotten that, for all of its benefits, the New Deal reinforced structural black economic disadvantage in many ways. It is certainly true that the Work Projects Administration (WPA) put many blacks to work, and many blacks also benefited from the relief programs.

March 2, 2009 — The right’s uncivil war against Obama. Will it succeed?

Posted at The Root.

Sen. Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican, is horrified that President Obama has become the “world’s best salesman of socialism.” He grimly argues that conservatives will have to “take to the streets to stop America’s slide into socialism.” And if that is not alarming enough, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has shrilly declared that the president’s policies would be loved by “Lenin and Stalin.”

November 4, 2008 — Here are some themes to look for while watching the returns that will determine the outcome of the election.

Posted at The Root.

Like millions of Americans, I’m attending an election return party with friends tonight. One of my closest friends is hosting it, and I’ve been told that the only reason I was invited is because I study American politics professionally. What my friend should know is that political scientists are not the best prognosticators, because collectively our heads are usually either stuck in the sand or among the clouds. But I’m also a political junkie, which might be a much sounder credential for an analyst. So from both perspectives, but especially the latter, here are some themes to look for while watching the returns that will determine the outcome of the election.

October 29, 2008 — McCain and his surrogates have shown that nothing is beyond the pale in their desperate effort to derail Obama.

Posted at The Root.

Half a century ago, Malcolm X warned that when “we” started winning by their rules, “they” would change the rules. The desperate and despicable tactics of the McCain-Palin campaign have vividly illustrated the lengths that the reactionaries who have dominated for most the last decade will go in order to maintain power. There is less than one week left, but here are some of the problems we should be monitoring. Many of these are not only a threat to Obama’s campaign, but much more importantly, a threat to a just participatory democracy and an anti-racist civil society. Even if Obama does win, which I fully expect, there is a real danger that long-lasting damage has been done to the American polity by some of the reactionary tactics of the GOP.

May 15, 2008 — Why Grand Theft Auto IV falls short of its promise.

Posted at The Root.

I have been gaming longer than most gamers have been alive. In the early 1970s, I was one of a handful of electronic technicians at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center who used what was allegedly the most powerful computer complex outside of the military and intelligence communities to play geeky Star Trek strategy games during lunch and after work.

May 6, 2008 — How the black pawns got pushed off the board.

Posted at The Root.

The Democratic Party’s primary race has reached a dangerous stage for black people. It has come to this. Both the Obama and Clinton campaigns are apparently willing to sacrifice black citizenship rights in order to win the Democratic nomination for president.

April 24, 2008 — The Potential Pitfalls of an Obama Presidency

Posted at The Root.

How will black voters react if Obama retains the lead in delegates, popular votes, states won and money raised, but the superdelegates give Clinton the nomination?

March 5, 2008 — The Potential Pitfalls of an Obama Presidency

Posted at The Root.

Abigail Thernstrom, the conservative commentator on race in the U.S., once called me a member of the “doom and gloom” contingent among black political scholars. So, that probably makes me overqualified to make this assertion, but here goes. An Obama presidency could seriously backfire on African Americans.

The Clinton campaign is playing the race card, but we still can’t vote for McCain.

Posted at The Root.

Princeton historian Sean Wilentz has leveled an odd charge against Barack Obama. He accuses the Illinois senator’s campaign of trying to hijack the Democratic presidential nomination by arguing it has a stronger claim on the nomination because Obama has more pledged delegates than Sen. Hillary Clinton and larger percentage of the popular vote. Wilentz argues Clinton should be regarded the winner of the nomination contest because she would have won easily if the rules had been different.

The moment that made me a radical.

Posted at The Root.

Chicago burned. The flames that were raging on the West Side were clearly visible outside of the school bus window that was carrying my high school jazz band. It was from this bus that I first glimpsed the insurrection and the grip of radical revolution took hold of me. Why call the “riot” an insurrection? Because to me that was clearly what it was. Chicago’s fate was being shared with over 100 sister cities throughout the United States — cities and neighborhoods not unlike mine— that had erupted in mass violence as word of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. swept the nation.