Anthony Samad: Jackie Robinson showed us that blacks and whites could co-exist on the same intellectual, emotional and physical planes. America had to see it before they could “see it.”
The Lowdown on Accidental Racism
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Bruce Reilly: The sensational buzz around country star Brad Paisley’s song “Accidental Racist” is perfect fodder for a Twitter blurb — but is this the extent of racial analysis we can muster in America?
Christopher Dorner, Racism, and LA’s Police Department
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Jasmyne Cannick: I want to see the relationship between Blacks and the LAPD improve and I believe that it has. But I also believe that we just took a huge step backwards with Dorner and no amount of community meetings with civil rights leaders and the LAPD posing for cameras is going to fix that.
Desiline Victor and Black History Month
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Joseph Palermo: Desiline Victor’s travails in trying to vote last November bring to mind Freedom Summer in Mississippi in 1964 when white vigilantes tortured and killed Micky Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney who had volunteered to register black voters.
Rosa Parks: Angry, Not Tired
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Peter Dreier: Rosa Parks’ defiance of Montgomery’s segregation laws was not an isolated incident. It was part of a lifelong crusade to dismantle Jim Crow.
Mapping Racism Through Digital Media
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Jessie Daniels: Following Obama’s re-election, white people who rooted for the other guy took to various forms of digital media and unleashed their disappointment. Some white folks went a good deal farther than disappointment into overt racism.
American Racism Past and Present
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Sharon Kyle: 20 years after Los Angeles erupted in civil unrest, still with major differentials in employment, housing, healthcare, education, and wealth between whites and blacks, are we sitting on a powder keg again?
Gabby Douglas and the Brown Paper Bag Test
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Sharon Kyle: Colorism gives unearned advantages to Blacks of lighter complexion and demeans and degrades Blacks of darker complexions. For white people reading this who are unaware of this practice, there is a test known as “the brown paper bag test” used to determine where your skin color placed you in the pecking order.
Post Racial America?! Hell to the No!
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Sheria Reid: No matter how well intentioned, burying one’s head in the sand and pretending that the monster doesn’t exist never works out well.
Romney Revealed – Race and Rampant Stereotypes
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Lauren Nile: Mitt Romney’s speach at the NAACP Convention this week revealed his unconscious racism of low expectations
Independence Day, For Some
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In 1852, former slave and legendary abolitionist Frederick Douglass was invited to give a speech at a 4th of July event to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Stop and Frisk Policy Not Preventing Crime
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Bruce Reilly: The NYPD is stopping more Black and Latino people than actually live in the city, harassing nearly 700,000 people last year alone.Statistics show that the more you Stop and Frisk, the less crime goes down.
20 Years After the LA Riots: What Have We Learned?
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Dick Price & Sharon Kyle: What has changed in South LA — then South Central — where the flames shot to the sky 20 years ago, after an all-white jury exonerated the gang of police officers who had beaten a black motorist half to death, captured on video for all to see?
Black Ministers Follow Obama on Same-Sex Marriage Stance
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Rev. Irene Monroe: For African-American ministers, the liability of Obama losing his 2012 re-election bid is far greater than being publicly outed for not being in lockstep with their homophobic brethren.
Silence Still Equals Death: Sexual Violence and Young Women of Color
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Sikivu Hutchinson: Until we change the self-hating mindset of many young black women, silence—as the HIV/AIDS activist saying goes—does equal death.
Living While Black
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Sheria Reid: Evidently, the right to defend oneself only applies to Zimmerman. Trayvon was followed by an adult male whom he did not know. For all he knew Zimmerman was a pedophile or a kidnapper or both.
America Heads Back to the Future
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Randy Shaw: Many white Americans yearn for the days when racism was not “an issue.” White attitudes toward George Zimmerman’s actions confirm this.
The Problem with White Guilt
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Sheria Reid: I’m tired of the generalization on the part of far too many white people that they have somehow borne and continue to bear the great burden of white guilt and that they’ve been treated so unfairly.
Mass Incarceration: Points of Agreement on the Right and the Left
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Diane Lefer: When a community sees daily injustice and doesn’t see the rule of law equally applied, it becomes morally and ethically easier to choose to live in a lawless way.
White Feminists Don’t Care about Black Women
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Jasmyne Cannick: why have these two female powerhouse organizations been missing in action on the two Los Angeles talk radio hosts who offended women, particularly Black women, when they called Whitney Houston a “crack ho” three days after her death?
The Pen Proves Mightier than the Chicotte: 1st Battle
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Mac Mckinney: This had really been the first battle in what would evolve into a relentless and global propaganda war, and Williams was really the first martyr in the Good Cause of wrestling the Congo from Leopold’s “talons” through the power of the pen.
Black and White in a Small Midwestern Town
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Steve Hochstadt: That mixing in Jacksonville was regulated by the racism of stores and restaurants which black families could not enter, of high school dances for white students only, of neighborhood covenants which allowed only whites to buy property.
Reflections on Black History Month
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Carol Lutness: This is not just a struggle for the African American. It is a struggle for all but the very few. Never was there a greater crisis than we all face now economically, politically and environmentally.
The Movie, “The Help”
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Sharon Kyle: As demonstrated in 1973, the Academy Awards can be used as a megaphone to reach those who are oblivious to the continued state of segregation and, as a result, racial inequality that persists in the United States.
Cynthia McKinney Tells It Like It Is: A Conversation with Gary S. Corseri
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Gary Corseri: When I was running for Congress back in 1992–for the first time—I was running to represent the second poorest district in Georgia… and, what I learned was that the poor people gave the most! — Cynthia McKinney
Supreme Court Set to End Affirmative Action in U.S. Schools
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Randy Shaw: In accepting a Texas case of a white student challenging racial preferences, the United States Supreme Court is again set to reverse decades of court precedents and impose its own conservative agenda.
Manago: Perhaps the Most Dangerous Black Gay Man
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Rev. Irene Monroe: To a nationwide community of same-gender loving (SGL), bisexual, transgender and progressive heterosexual African American men, Manago is the MAN!, seen as a visionary, game changer and “social architect.”
Kamala Harris: Foreclosure Settlement Scores Points, Raises Questions
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Sharon Kyle: Kamala Harris’ broad smile and “down home” style was gobbled up by the crowd as members of the African American Caucus listened and showed support for their Attorney General.
From Ghetto to Graduate Studies
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Alvaro Huerta: Too often, corporate-minded outsiders who never experienced poverty or attended overcrowded public schools preach to inner-city Latinos and African Americans about working hard, making the right choices and being accountable for their actions as the sole means to upward mobility.
Friday Feedback: Do Newt, Mitt and the Boys Even Like Most People?
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Friday Feedback: This week, an article by Steve Hochstadt, Do Republican Candidates Like Most Americans?, drew a series of comments, supportive and not. We’ll lead with Steve’s aggregate response, then include the observations by others he comments on.
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