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
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.
“My Daddy Is a Presbyterian Preacher”
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Berry Craig: My town — and many more like it across the South and in border states like Kentucky — was deeply divided by the color bar. I didn’t see it because it didn’t affect me. Before meeting Cecil Horton, black people were invisible to me, as in the title of Ralph Ellison’s famous novel.
U.S. Native Prisoners of War
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Jessie Daniels: My father identified as Native American. In his view, Native Americans had it “much worse” than black Americans and still do. I argue that rather than trying to rank order oppression and which group “had it worse,” it’s important that we see these as connected.
What Center?
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Joseph Palermo: The political “center” of American politics is a moving target. And for the last thirty years it has moved in only one direction: Rightward.
Kamala’s Campaign and the Crenshaw Office
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Nyabingi Kuti: The Crenshaw office is one of the main reasons that Kamala is now ahead by a razor-thin margin. Over 500 volunteers of all races and ages came to Crenshaw and banged out over 25,000 calls in two weeks in support of Kamala.
Tea Party Diversity?
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David Love: People of color and other minorities need membership in the Tea Party like they needed membership in the White Citizens’ Council during Jim Crow. And the notion of Tea Party diversity is just as implausible.
“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,
Rand Paul Heads for the Hills
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Berry Craig: Of course, not all Republicans are bigots. But Paul and his pals are more proof — as if proof were needed — that the GOP is mainly what the Southern Democrats were in slavery and Jim Crow days: the white folks’ party.
Angry Left Needs Hugs and Kisses
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Jules Siegel: The angry left presumes that the president is in full control of the government, when he’s obviously not. Even George W. Bush learned that and he was a Republican.
Texas GOP Is a Grand Old Piece of Work
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David Love: On the issue of family values, whatever that means, the Republican’s policy paper condemns homosexuality and opposes the legalization of sodomy and supports a prohibition on all pornography and strip clubs. Further, they would make it a felony to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple, or for a civil official to perform a same-sex marriage ceremony.
Oh, Bill O’Reilly — It’s “Our” Country, Too
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Tanya Acker: There are many among that celebrated group of “We the People” who are opposed to the Arizona law but who nonetheless remain deeply troubled by our broken immigration system. I am one of them and, frankly, I do not need to be lectured about the consequences of illegal immigration by Mr. O’Reilly or anyone else.
Jim Crow in a Teabag
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David Love: From their early days at the McCain-Palin rallies during the 2008 presidential campaign, the Tea Party crowd has had an energy about them that smells of a Jim Crow type of racial intolerance, just like the 1950s and 1960s. Rand Paul’s prominence only confirms what many already knew, which is that racism under girds the Teabag movement.
Why Not Blame It on a Black Man
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David Love: I just read a pilot study that CNN released on the racial attitudes of children. And nearly 60 years after the watershed Brown v. Board of Education case – in which the Supreme Court invalidated Jim Crow school segregation – it seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Keep Grant on the 50
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Berry Craig: When Reagan said he was a “states’ rights” guy, “he was elbow deep in the same old race-baiting Southern strategy of Goldwater and Nixon” and “tapping out the code,” Bob Herbert wrote in the New York Times in 2007. “It was understood that when politicians started chirping about ‘states’ rights’ to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when it comes down to you and the blacks, we’re with you. And Reagan meant it.”
The Bluest Eye Revisited
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Sikivu Hutchinson: Perhaps no other book in contemporary American literature has captured the ontology of black female childhood experience and imagination as devastatingly as Toni Morrison’s 1970 novel The Bluest Eye. In the novel, Morrison’s preteen female protagonists bear fierce witness to the psychological disfigurements of racism, sexism, and segregation. They comment on the mystery of adulthood and the savagery of being dehumanized as young black girls in a culture that exalts the blue-eyed Barbie ideal. Speaking from an era in which racial progress was equated with the enfranchisement of black men, the female voices of The Bluest Eye quietly historicize the trials of black women in apartheid America.
A Klan by Any Other Name Would Smell as Racist
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David A. Love: Those of you who remember the televised images of angry white protestors in the 1950s and 1960s know that this is nothing new. Whenever a black child tried to integrate a school in the Jim Crow South, the teabaggers of their day were out there to show their outrage. Whenever African Americans tried to register to vote or sit at a segregated lunch counter, the same crowd was out there. They came with their fists, their vulgarity, threats of violence and spitting.
The Myth of the Sensible Center
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Carl Bloice: The “moderate Republican” has gone the way of the typewriter. As the tea party people and their ilk become more racist and reactionary – and their rhetoric more incendiary, each day – the GOP encourages them and endeavors to pull them into its embrace. Meanwhile the “bluedog Democrats” become increasingly irrelevant with each passing day, their bark more in evidence than their bite.
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.
The Ballad of Emmett Till: Till We Meet Again
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Ed Rampell: But in a country still troubled by racism, where hate crimes are on the rise — from nooses and KKK hoods at the University of California San Diego to death threats against the first African American president — any month is appropriate for this engaging interpretation of the life and death of Emmett Till, the martyr who launched the Civil Rights movement. Three months after Till’s murder, Rosa Parks stood up by sitting down in a segregated Southern bus.
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.
A Homegoing for My Father
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Welcome to my father’s homegoing! He was a simple man with an extraordinary life, A Georgia boy, born and raised in a wooden shack in Augusta, In the heart of Jim Crow, With segregation all around, And with lynchings always waiting just around the corner, Born to a Black Mama, And his old man was [...]
The New William H. Parker Center Controversy: Revisionist History Cannnot Override Long Racial Legacy
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The City of Los Angeles is about to unveil its brand new “state-of-the-art,” world-class headquarters for what it considers its world-class law enforcement agency. Just know there’s one too many “world-class” attributes in that last sentence, and given the latest controversy — the public should decide where the “world-class” attribute should actually go. A month [...]
The Election of Barack Obama and the Politics of Interracial and Same-Sex Marriage
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The election (and now the inauguration) of Barack Obama has inspired a widespread sense of awe at the scope and scale of change in race relations in America—and more than a hint of self-congratulation. The news media just can’t seem to resist trumpeting the example of interracial marriage. When Barack Obama’s white mother married his [...]
The NAACP’s 100th Anniversary: What’s the Future Hold for the Granddaddy of Civil Rights Groups?
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This week, the most venerable of civil rights organizations, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, more commonly known as the NAACP, turns 100 years old. Founded on Abraham Lincoln’s 100th birthday (February 12th, 1809), the organization had a controversial start. The organization was born out of what started as an effort by [...]
Iraqi Journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi Captures the Moment
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Jailed Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi has thrust himself into history and become an international overnight celebrity. Thousands protest for his release. A Saudi businessman offers $10 million for one of his shoes. Libya nominates him for a medal. Why? Because al-Zaidi threw his shoes at President Bush, capturing a moment for which millions have yearned. [...]
Locked and Loaded
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“Tool up.” “They’re buying racks and racks of ammunition. There were spots where there was none left.” “You better have a security plan in place.” These were not words uttered in a frontier dialect from the lips of NRA members.
“Black Is Back” in America
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The Presidency aspirations of Barack Obama have caused a renewed discussion on race in America. The prospect of a black President has cast America in a different light throughout the world — as demonstrated by Obama’s highly successful trip to the Middle East and Europe last week.
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