Farai Chideya

I recently moved to Los Angeles. Along with the fun of exploring its interconnected cities, I experienced a string of racial incidents. Some were faintly ridiculous, like a spat with the owners of a spa who'd canceled my reservation. Others were all too familiar, like meeting a landlord who clearly didn't want to rent to me. It was as if the universe was saying, "Hold on, black woman, don't get too big for your britches."

Humility is a virtue… more

When talking about the evolution of politics and technology, it helps to give a little history. Okay, a lot of history. The human body is, in most senses, the same as it was 50,000 years ago (oh, those cravings for carbs!), and the workings of the human brain haven't evolved significantly in 5,000 years. That's when we learned to better process language, and societies flourished. Seventy-five years ago, television was invented -- the first form of virtual reality. Now the average American watches over four hours of… more

The Democrats and progressives were awash in money in 2004. Some of it went to the right places; some of it did not. How do you know? By using a best-practices model to examine who did what in 2004, how effective those efforts were, how to replicate what worked and how to share resources.

Take the efforts aimed at young Americans. Did marketing-based approaches like Citizen Change's "Vote or Die?" campaign get people to the polls or leave them feeling… more