-
On Its 50th Anniversary, the Voting Rights Act Is Under Full-Blown Attack
The national commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act takes place against the backdrop of a devastating full-scale assault on the civil rights movement’s signature legislation. For African Americans, the passage of the Voting Rights Act on Aug. 6, 1965, represented the culmination of a centuries-long struggle for citizenship. President Lyndon Johnson’s…
-
President Calls for Racial Justice and Prison Reform
President Barack Obama’s call for major criminal-justice reforms at the NAACP convention in Philadelphia Tuesday offered concrete policy follow-through to issues of racial justice the president raised during his historic eulogy in Charleston, S.C., last month. In the City of Brotherly Love, Obama outlined a series of reforms aimed at reducing the numbers of Americans in…
-
Why the Treatment of Haitian Families in the Dominican Republic Is a Crisis
Haitian lives matter. They offer a wider global measuring stick and lens through which to view the global immigration and human rights crises of our time. The world’s immigration crisis finds European xenophobia increasing at the same time that anti-immigration sentiment flourishes in the U.S. and other parts of the world. Haitian immigrants and their…
-
A Forceful Obama Decries Racism and White Supremacy in Eulogy
President Barack Obama tapped into the black church’s soaring rhetorical traditions Friday afternoon to deliver a bold and brilliant eulogy honoring the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the 41-year-old preacher and state senator who was gunned down, along with eight others, at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. Grace proved to be the theme running…
-
Why the Black Church Has Always Mattered
The brutal act of racial terror that took the lives of nine black parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., purposely targeted the most important institution that has ever existed in the black community: the black church. So it should come as no surprise that in the age of Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore…
-
It’s Time the Feds Start Tracking Police Violence
As of this writing, almost 500 people—138 of them African American—have been shot and killed by police in the United States this year. These numbers come from The Guardian’s investigation that is literally counting the dead. Outrage against the epidemic of police killings of unarmed black men helped spark a national #BlackLivesMatter protest movement that…
-
What Happens to Black Women Who Boldly Speak Truth About Racial Inequality
Two remarkable black women made news this week. Michelle Obama, the most scrutinized African-American woman in the 21st century, did so by acknowledging unspoken truths about race, class and gender in public during a landmark commencement speech at Tuskegee University in Alabama. The other, Saida Grundy, a newly minted Ph.D. from Michigan scheduled to begin…
-
Obama’s Powerful Words on Racial Injustice Should Be Matched by Bold Policy Measures
President Barack Obama’s announcement Monday of the nonprofit group My Brother’s Keeper’s Alliance, during a speech at Lehman College in the Bronx, N.Y., reflects the power of the racial protests and uprisings that have gripped the nation, most recently in Baltimore. With national polls in the wake of urban rebellions indicating Americans are more pessimistic…
-
Black Men Are Missing: Tell Us Something We Don’t Know
The tragic and spiraling plight of black men in American society has reached such epic proportions that the national paper of record, the New York Times, is discussing the “disappearance” of African-American men from civil society. “The stigmatization of blackness presents an enormous obstacle,” it notes, “even to small boys.” The editorial, “Forcing Black Men…
-
The New Killing Fields: How Police Tourism Sanctions the Lethal Pursuit of Black People
The April 2 shooting death of Eric Harris by 73-year-old Tulsa, Okla., Reserve Deputy Robert Bates is more than just the latest tragedy involving a black man’s execution on film. Grisly footage from the body camera of an officer shows Harris, a black man with a criminal record, fleeing deputies who targeted him in an…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
