Steve Hochstadt: Once the enforced segregation of black and gay Americans into closets and ghettos was broken, discriminatory ideas have lost their persuasive power.
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 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.
“Self-Deportation” Devastates Families and Communities
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Michele Waslin: Attrition through enforcement — “self-deportation” — has gone from being a catchy phrase coined by immigration restrictionists to a frightening reality in many parts of the U.S.
Who Is an American?
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Steve Hochstadt: Those who have argued for excluding some Americans from full rights, who have urged some Americans to leave because they weren’t American enough, who wanted to separate and classify and dominate people, have always been wrong.
Newt Gingrich and What Black People Need: Intellectualizing Racism
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Anthony Samad: By intellectualizing racism, Gingrich is leaving his signature card with Americans that still have a race problem with Obama. We can’t let it work.
The Cooler Bandits: The New N-Word Is Felon
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The Cooler Bandits follows four friends struggling to re-enter society after 20 years in prison, only to confront their future in the old neighborhood.
They’d Like to “Occupy” Their Own Homes
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Paulina Gonzalez: House by house, block by block, the residents of these South Central neighborhoods are being pushed out by landlords eager to capitalize on USC’s expansion.
Resisting Gender Violence Without Cops or Prisons
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Victoria Law builds upon her earlier prison abolitionist critique by discussing practical alternatives for effectively confronting gender violence without using the prison system.
Retirement: Sitting on a One-Legged Stool
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Vivian Rothstein: According to the American Association of Retired People (AARP), a frightening 35 percent of Americans over 65 currently rely only on Social Security (an average person gets benefits of $14,000/year) to survive.
LA’s Offer to Its Occupiers
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Paulina Gonzalez: What if Occupy locked arms with community groups and announced its refusal to move unless the city extends and agrees to enforce the moratorium on the eviction of tenants in bank-controlled foreclosed properties?
Queer Politics for the Birds
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Rev. Irene Monroe: Same-sex coupling is not a new phenomenon in the animal world. However, its disclosure and acceptance of it comes in a homophobic society that will attempt to pathologize it.
The Occupy Movement Needs a Good Fight
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Shamus Cooke: If the national Occupy Movement fought for a massive public jobs program and against cuts to social programs by massively taxing the wealthy and corporations, the vast majority of working people would join the movement until it was capable of actually winning these demands.
The Way Forward for Occupy Portland
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Shamus Cooke: If the Occupy Movement demanded that the wealthy and corporations be taxed to create jobs and prevent cuts to social programs, the 99% would see a movement built in its own image
Why Arizona Governor Jan Brewer Is Bluffing on State Immigration Laws
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Seth Hoy: Evidence suggests that many unauthorized immigrants are firmly integrated into U.S. society. According to a Department of Homeland Security report, three-fifths of unauthorized immigrants who were in the country as of 2010 (11.1 million) were here for more than a decade.
Next Steps for the Occupy Movement
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Shamus Cooke: The Occupy Movement has more than room for an umbrella of demands from diverse sections of working class people, but now we must focus on what unites the vast majority, since the corporations have focused on dividing us for decades.
Occupy Wall Street Heralds a Global Counterculture
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Mark Naison: The longer I stayed at Liberty Plaza, the more it felt like the countercultural communities of the 1960s, where discontent with war and a corrupt social system had bred a communal spirit marked by incredible generosity and openness to strangers.
Why Libertarians Should Not Scorn Occupy Wall Street
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Wendy McElroy: Protesters have been maced, beaten, and arrested by the police for peacefully exercising their right to free assembly and free speech. Libertarians who put their disapproval first and foremost are missing the proper emphasis.
Immigrant Laborers Strengthen American Workforce, Economy
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Michele Waslin: While immigration restrictionists have long tried to demonize immigrant workers and blame them for high unemployment rates and other economic woes, the facts make it clear that immigrants actually create jobs and businesses and boost the wages of native-born workers.
Trivializing Rape: Zombie Feminism and Prudish SlutWalkers
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Wendy McElroy: The raw politics and hypocrisy surrounding SlutWalk expose mainstream feminism as an exhausted movement that continues to have influence only because it has been institutionalized into laws and academia.
Latinos Defend DHS’s Focus on High Priority Immigration Cases
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Seth Hoy: Anti-immigrant restrictionists will continue to drive a wedge between Latino voters and the Republican party by hurling racially charged sentiments—like today’s accusation that President Obama is waging a war on “white America”—in hopes of stirring up their own base.
The Right to a Job
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Herb Engstrom: At this time of TEA Party hysteria, Fox News mendacity, and GOP hypocrisy a government guarantee of universal employment might seem like a radical idea, although it seemed not to be so to Franklin Roosevelt.
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.
“The Help” Reflects the Racial Divide, Then and Now
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Sharon Kyle: In a culture where “whiteness” is rarely mentioned and hardly ever critically examined it is not surprising that the women in my church saw the story as heartwarming and uplifting. I, on the other hand, saw this as just another story of the black experience as viewed through the white lens.
Volunteering: The Challenge of Making a Difference
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Randy Shaw: The rise of community service (abetted by high school students desiring to boost their college applications) over the past two decades has not stopped dramatically increasing social and economic inequality and an increasing disbelief in once universally accepted scientific theories such as evolution.
Immigration Case Backlog At All-Time High
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Michelle Waslin: The growing backlog means that more immigrants are being kept in detention for longer periods of time. Making matters worse, a bill by Rep. Lamar Smith (H.R. 1932) to allow the U.S. to detain immigrants indefinitely is currently making its way through the House of Representatives.
Microaggressions and Stereotype Threat
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Jessie Daniels: Our prevailing mythology of meritocracy in the U.S. tells us that education is a path to achievement. To do provide that, we expect schools to be free from racism and provide an equal education to all.
Our Fellow Felons
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Hannah Petrie: Even though the rates of drug-dealing and drug-using occurs equally among different races – (think weed here) whites deal to whites, blacks deal to blacks, Hispanics to Hispanics – it’s the people of color who get busted. And once you’re labeled a felon – and denied access to employment, housing, and other rights — your chances of returning to a straight and normal life are extremely low. It is a system designed to keep felons felons.
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Cain Case Shines Light on Workplace Sexual Harassment
Michael Sigman: If the credible-sounding charges from Sharon Bialek — a conservative Republican — are to be believed, Herman Cain’s behavior was a bridge way, way too far.