Tina Dupuy: Birthers don’t want proof of what they don’t believe. They want to hold onto doubt regardless of evidence.
“Voices” — What a Sizzling Saga
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Ed Rampell: Voices: A Legacy to Remember does have a memorable story combined with snazzy costumes, great foot stomping choreography and finger snapping music, from traditional Negro Spirituals to Gospel to Jazz,
The Messology of Bishop Eddie Long
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Irene Monroe: When preachers pontificate too much from on high about the sins of homosexual sex, the cautionary tale is to be careful of what you say, because your words invariably will come back to bite you, as we are seeing with Bishop Eddie Long.
It’s Time To Remember Tom Bradley (Part 2)
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Michael Sigman: Just as Bob Dylan wouldn’t be possible without Woody Guthrie, or Ronald Reagan without Barry Goldwater, the idea of a direct line from Tom Bradley to Barack Obama can give us perspective on the contemporary political scene.
Smile, You’re a Liberal After All!
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Steven Conn: As midterm elections approach, conservatives seek to return America to the way things used to be. Not so fast, argues historian Steven Conn, unless you really want racial segregation, child labor, voting discrimination, and all the other things that old-time conservatives once supported.
Church of Misfits Harbors American War Resister
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Tom Hayden: Next week the Canadian parliament is expected to hear a bill proposing humanitarian grounds for granting asylum in the country. Watson’s application for permanent resident status is on hold. About 40 other American war resisters are seeking asylum in Canada, where nearly 80,000 were given protection during the Vietnam War.
Why I Keep Talking about Race
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Steve Hochstadt: I will keep talking about race because my students cannot understand American history without knowing the role played by racism.
End the Silent Segregation in the U.S. Military
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Tracy Emblem: Compare President Truman’s proclamation of equal opportunity and treatment in the military to today’s efforts to repeal the 1993 “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy imposed by Congress. This discriminatory practice is tantamount to silent segregation of gay and lesbian personnel and puts them at continued risk to lose their jobs and all of their benefits.
Blacks and The N-Word
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Rev. Irene Monroe: But, our culture’s present-day cavalier use of the n-word speaks less about our rights to free speech and more about how we as Americans — both White and Black — have become anesthetized to the damaging and destructive use of this epithet.
Despite Extra Help, Weakest Bailed-Out Bank Still Among Worst
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Marian Wang: At the center of the ethics controversy enveloping Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, is OneUnited, the nation’s largest African-American-owned bank.
The Hidden Story Behind the Sherrod Case: USDA Racism
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Pete Daniel: The rush to dismiss Shirley Sherrod based on an edited video contrasts remarkably with the tens of thousands of cases of USDA bureaucrats denying African American farmers loans, jobs, acreage, information, and courtesy who were neither dismissed or reprimanded.
Essence Magazine’s True Color
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Rev. Irene Monroe: There has been a color change at Essence. After forty years of having sisters from the African Diaspora as its fashion directors, the new one — Ellianna Placas — is white. And the news is sending seismic shock waves to many of its subscribers here in the U.S. and across the globe.
Healing the Black-White Divide on Homophobia
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Rev. Irene Monroe: McClurkin is a classic example why homophobia is an ongoing problem in the African American community, and it must be challenged at every opportunity.
No Jobs – The Theory of “Structural” Unemployment
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Carl Bloice: With high unemployment and no jobs, the actions of those in Congress who hold up the extension of benefits to the unemployed are morally repugnant. making it. The fellow who said the jobs are not coming back failed to say where they went.
Are We Not Patriots, Too?
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Rev. Irene Monroe: As LGBTQ Americans, our patriotism is not recognized. But one of our community’s greatest moments of patriotism was the Stonewall Riots of June 27–29, 1969, in New York City’s Greenwich Village. We celebrate their heroism every day as out-of-the-closet people who are intentionally visible in various facets of American life.
Blacks Prison and Unemployment
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Sherwood Ross: Slumlords charge exorbitant rents. “Convenience” stores charge higher prices. Military recruiters have their pick of jobless youth desperate for work. And the for-profit, private prisons increase their head count (and income) as the judicial system hands off the young drug peddlers caught in the legal web. As the Kaiser Family Foundation reported, African-Americans fill 40 percent of the nation’s prison cells. Yet they make up just 13 percent of the nation’s population.
The Usual Suspects: Arizona and the Black/Latino Divide
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Sikivu Hutchinson: Homegrown black support for or ambivalence about the Arizona law is symptomatic of a deep vein of frustration, anger, cultural resentment and xenophobia. Study after study indicates that African Americans are the most residentially segregated, suffer the greatest discrimination in job application and employment, and are amongst the biggest recipients of predatory mortgage loans.
21st Century Racism on UC San Diego’s Campus
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Anthony Samad: For the past five weeks, one of the ugliest episodes of racism in recent years (before the Tea Partiers started spittin’ on people and calling Congress people “Nig**rs” and “Fag**ts” at the Congressional health care vote last weekend) has been playing out on a campus of one of the nation’s largest publicly funded university systems.
How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Undercaste
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Michelle Alexander: The uncomfortable truth, however, is that crime rates do not explain the sudden and dramatic mass incarceration of African Americans during the past 30 years. Crime rates have fluctuated over the last few decades — they are currently are at historical lows — but imprisonment rates have consistently soared. Quintupled, in fact. And the vast majority of that increase is due to the War on Drugs.
African-Americans Have Seven Times Greater Chance of Imprisonment
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Sherwood Ross: It is far more likely that in the late twentieth century, in contrast to earlier time, patterns of discrimination reflect unconscious biases rather than blatant attempts to oppress African Americans.
The New Jim Crow
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Michelle Alexander: The clock has been turned back on racial progress in America, though scarcely anyone seems to notice. All eyes are fixed on people like Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey who have defied the odds and achieved great power, wealth and fame.
Why Can’t Politicians Say “Light-Skinned Negro”?
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Sharon Kyle: Unless they’re compelled to address it, as Barack Obama was during the explosion of negativity around Rev. Jeremiah Wright, you can pretty much count on race not being discussed on the campaign trail.
Are We Always Going to Be Preoccupied with Racism?
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Yet, the long view shows that since this racial system had a beginning, and important changes have taken place, one can venture that it will also have an end. The election of Barack Obama is an encouraging sign.
Living While Black in Cambridge
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None of us African-American residents of Cambridge are surprised or shocked by the humiliation and harassment Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 58, of Harvard University encountered at the hands of Cambridge police.
Black America’s Double-Dealing on Drugs
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“Junkie. Pothead. That’s where I’d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man.” So wrote current U.S. president Barack Obama about his youth. In May 2009, Jabrai Jordan Copney, a black man, allegedly shot Justin Cosby, a black man, inside a Harvard University dormitory. Cosby fled, collapsed a block away, and [...]
Good Hair v Nappy Hair
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The N Word We Rarely Address ike most blacks in America, I was raised in an environment where hair like mine, kinky hair, was frequently referred to as “bad hair.” Conversely, straight hair or kink-less hair was characterized as “good hair“. I grew up receiving a steady stream of messages that directly or indirectly informed [...]
Plea Bargains in the Criminal McJustice System
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In Philadelphia, it is time for a new district attorney. The current D.A. Lynne Abraham is retiring, and none too soon – after 18 years in the position, she has been called “America’s deadliest D.A.” for her exceptionally voracious appetite in seeking the death penalty. Without question, most of the people sentenced to death were [...]
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