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Former Ambassador Defends Obamaâs NSA Spying Program
A month after then-President Bill Clinton appointed Charles R. Stith as his new ambassador to Tanzania, the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam was bombed by Al Qaeda. It happened pre-9/11, in August 1998, and Stith was tasked with restoring the embassy while âpromoting American trade and investment in Africa.â Today, Stith is director of the…
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âAsk a Slaveâ: How Did You Get to Be a House Maid?
(The Root) â Born out of her experience playing the slave maid of George Washington at his Mount Vernon estate, actress Azie Mira Dungeyâs acclaimed Web series, Ask a Slave, is a tragicomic homage to the questions she encountered there. Dungey plays the slave Lizzie Mae in the series, which begins its second season on…
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Black Adults Need to Stop Spewing Anti-Black Rhetoric at Children
Sheryl Underwood’s disparaging comments about kinky hair jogged Danielle C. Belton’s memory about the negative things she’s heard black adults say to black children about their features. In a piece at Clutch magazine, Belton stresses the importance of grown folk not giving black children inferiority complexes about their brown complexions or hair texture. The people who told me…
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Obama: Standing in the Shadow of MLK
(The Root) â In my grandmother’s Arkansas home hangs a portrait of President Barack Obama with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the portrait has written beneath the two men “We Have a Dream; the Dream Has Come True.” It was one of many paintings, posters, buttons, T-shirts and other products that came…
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Have I Wasted the Civil Rights Legacy?
(The Root) â I have a friend, a good friend, with whom I share an affliction. He, too, comes from a good family that has done many great things in the face of dire situations, which he and I would learn about only in books. We read about the “Whites Only” bathrooms, lunch counters, the…
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Some of My Best Friends Are White
(The Root) â When the Lena Dunham-created show Girls became a hit for HBO, one of the complaints was the show’s lack of diversity despite being set in ethnically diverse New York City. Well, as it turned out, Dunham admitted (in a more eloquent way than I’m about to put it) that she didn’t write…
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At-Risk Youths: What Can Obama Really Do?
(The Root) â The teen years. It’s that time we spend becoming the adults we are today. Days are supposed to be filled with school, dating, friends, SATs and growing up. But that idyllic scenario doesn’t ring true for all. Not for one group between the ages of 15 and 19, who may not make…
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George Zimmerman and the Price of Infamy
(The Root) â Last week George Zimmerman â found innocent of murder, but still the killer of teen Trayvon Martin â was pulled over by a police officer in Forney, Texas, east of Dallas. Nothing happened. In fact, the only detail of note was that Zimmerman was packing heat in the glove compartment (which he…
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Strong Black Women Do Cry
Danielle C. Belton, writing at Clutch magazine, details her own emotional history in a fresh and revealing piece about, well, crying. She argues that it’s not just for white girls or something that black women do out of anger. Black women deal with a lot of âexpectationsâ about our behavior and what we should or should…
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Why Assimilation Is a 'Dirty Word'
Assimilation is a “dirty word” because the term is conflicted, Danielle C. Belton writes at Clutch magazine, especially now, when race and racism have been pushed to the fore as topics of discussion in America. Assimilate is a dirty word for me because in reference to black people surviving in America it’s both necessary and…
