David Love: Crown Heights was imminently important from a political perspective, as it altered the course of New York’s political history and ended the brief stint that was Black Power in the Big Apple.
Philly’s Mayor’s Message to the Youth? Yeah, Right.
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Jasmyne A. Cannick: It was another case of yet another Black leader passionately voicing the frustration of his generation with younger generations of Blacks by preaching to the choir.
Not All Black Democrats Subscribe to ‘But He’s the First Black President’
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Jasmyne A. Cannick: Me — I long fell out of love with the President. I don’t talk about it much because doing so can be a detriment to your well-being in certain company.
Redistricting and California’s African Americans
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Jasmyne Cannick: The bottom line is that they can draw all the Black voter-friendly districts they want but if Blacks continue on this mass exodus to the South, there won’t be enough Blacks left to vote anyone into office and the ones that are left won’t have the same adoration for the political process as their ancestors.
How Redistricting Might Hurt California’s African Americans
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Anthony Samad: The CCRC now claims that Blacks are OVER represented in the state’s Congressional delegation. Their mindset is being reflected in the maps released so far.
Tracy Morgan’s Homophobic Rant Is About Black Manhood
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Rev. Irene Monroe: While I will continue to argue that the African American community doesn’t have a patent on homophobia, it does, however, have a problem with it. And Tracy Morgan, comedian and actor on NBC’s “30 Rock,” is another glaring example of the malady.
We’re All Black Now
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David Love: Corporate greed on the part of arms manufacturers has turned an obscure and anachronistic amendment dealing with militias into a license to kill, literally, on a massive scale. The result is a gun for every American, with no system of licensing, registration and background checks.
Provincetown’s Not Safe for Black Lesbians
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Rev. Irene Monroe: The sexual and homophobic harassment many of us LBT sisters endure from many of our heterosexual brothers of African descent back home in our communities, or imported from one of the Caribbean Islands has, too, become an inescapably reality at P-town.
“Blacks as Aborigines” Gaffe Draws Ire
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Andrea Nill: Alabama state senator Scott Beason (R), who sponsored the state’s tough new immigration law, has been caught on tape referring to black customers of a casino as “aborigines.”
Depression, Not Recession Rocks U.S. Ghettos
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Sherwood Ross: Instead of investing in a framework to help blacks advance by their own initiative, the Federal government has flushed billions down the toilets of friendly foreign strongmen such as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarek.
“I Don’t Have to Show You Latinos No Stinking Education”
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Leonard Isenberg: At the root of public education’s generational failure to educate Latino and Black students in this country is the unrelenting not so subliminal message that these young people are inferior and cannot learn.
More Black Men Are in Prison Today Than Enslaved in 1850
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Dick Price: “More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began,” Michelle Alexander told a standing room only house at the Pasadena Main Library this past Wednesday
Like Black Church, St. Patrick’s Day Parades Are Anti-Gay
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Rev. Irene Monroe: St. Patrick’s Day has rolled around again, and like previous March 17th celebrations nationwide, its LGBTQ communities are not invited. As a contentious and protracted argument for now over two decades, parade officials have a difficult time grasping the notion that being Irish and gay is also part of their heritage.
Race and Racism Online: What the Research Tells Us
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Jessie Daniels: Assumptions about the whiteness embedded in the infrastructure and design gets spoken when there are ruptures in that sameness, such as the introduction of an African-American-themed web browser, Blackbird.
Cops Are Missing the Bad Guys While Profiling the Black Guys
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David Love: Reading 12 Angry Men: True Stories of Being a Black Man in America Today made me angry, not because the subject matter was brand new to me, but because it was far too familiar – not only as a black man, but also as a human rights advocate who worked with police brutality victims and their families back in the 1990s, and decided to go to law school as a result.
To Be Atheist, Feminist, and Black
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Sikivu Hutchinson: Sadly, there is still a fair amount of ignorance and bigotry toward black non-believers in African American communities due to the stereotype that atheists are immoral, rudderless, and not authentically black.
The Other Down Low: Sagging
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Jasmyne Cannick: Don’t expect an end to sagging by Black men in or out of prison coming anytime soon. Heavily influenced by mass media, what started off as a signal for other prisoners that one was gay, is now a part of pop culture.
GOP Austerity Plan Targets Blacks and Latinos
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David Love: This new wave of austerity is a con game, and it’s racist too. Now is the time to reverse the trend and restore equity, justice and sanity to America’s economic system.
Can’t Wait to Hear What He Had in His Hand This Time
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Anthony Samad: The LAPD shot and killed another Black man. Why weren’t two trained law enforcement officers able to subdue an unarmed, naked man? I’d like to know how this happened. I just wanna know what he had in his hand that would justify the use of lethal force.
Trust Black Women: Remove the Billboards
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Jan Robinson Flint: It is reprehensible that someone would use Black children as a tool to attack Black women for political purposes.
Should Kwanzaa Stay in Black Neighborhoods?
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Rev. Irene Monroe: This Kwanzaa holiday, I’ll head out to the neighborhood store to purchase my red, black and green candles for the kinara, because I know that the strength of the U.S. economy is found in its multicultural small community owned businesses that reflect our nation’s diversity. And in so doing, I would also be honoring the fourth principle of Kwanzaa which is cooperative economics.
Black America Still Sees AIDS as a Gay Disease
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Irene Monroe: If black America were its own country, standing on its own like Haiti or Nigeria, black Americans would rate 16th with the epidemic in the world. And the epidemic is heavily concentrated in urban enclaves like Detroit, New York, Newark, Washington, D.C and the Deep South.
Fetishizing School Chiefs Hurts Kids
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Randy Shaw: Unfortunately, the media’s excessive and irrational devotion to school chiefs as saviors for the nation’s schools ignores the reality that no school chief, can overcome inadequate school funding by running schools like corporate turnaround specialists, and fetishizing their importance distracts from schools’ real needs. Education seems to be the only field where rising to the top requires no experience. Careers spent in the profit-driven corporate world are now identified as the best backgrounds for public school leadership.
Heretics, Humanism, and the Hood
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Sikivu Hutchinson: The mental health crisis amongst African Americans is a devastating indicator of racial and social inequity, of which the prayer as therapy epidemic is an insidious symptom. Frederick Douglass once wrote, “I prayed for twenty years and received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” What would Douglass, a trailblazing male feminist, have made of the brutal ironies of twenty first century black America?
The Tea Party and Himmler’s Black Legion
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Omer Bartov: The revelation that Rich Iott, the Republican candidate for the 9th Congressional District seat in Ohio and a Tea Party favorite, has been in the habit of dressing up as a Waffen-SS soldier, is just one more sign of the heroic ignorance that characterizes large sectors of American politicians, the media that covers them, and the public that votes for them.
Eddie Long Scandal: Silence Doesn’t Make Church Molestation Go Away
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Anthony Samad: The presence of gay men in black churches, and not just in the choir, is significant. This is an issue waiting to break in probably every city in America. And it’s not that the congregation doesn’t know it. It is now the silent concern in the black church.
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Black Atheists in the Pulpit
Sikivu Hutchinson: Congregants of Zion Hill Baptist Church in South Los Angeles probably thought Pastor Seth Pickens was certifiable when he proposed a community dialogue with the L.A. Black Skeptics Group.