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Boston—With Its Turbulent Racial History—Has Awakened With the #BlackLivesMatter Movement
Boston: This city has witnessed an extraordinary awakening and outpouring of #BlackLivesMatter political demonstrations over the past week and a half by a new generation of activists who are determined to change the very face of a city not known as a bastion of racial justice. In the days before Thanksgiving, upwards of 2,000 protesters…
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What Benjamin Watson’s Facebook Post Gets Wrong When It Comes to God, Sin and Ferguson
New Orleans Saints player Benjamin Watson penned one of the most-talked-about essays in the aftermath of last Monday’s racial violence in Ferguson, Mo. The heartfelt essay discusses Watson’s personal feelings regarding the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown and the St. Louis County grand jury’s decision not to indict police Officer Darren Wilson in connection with…
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Ferguson Is a Wake-Up Call That We Are Not Post-Racial
Racial injustice is alive and well in America—and our nation will never achieve racial peace without justice. Monday night’s announcement of the grand jury’s decision not to indict Ferguson, Mo., police Officer Darren Wilson on any charges in the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown sparked a series of, at times, violent protests in Ferguson…
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2014 Midterms: Running Away From Obama Is What Cost Democrats
The Republican Party’s takeover of the U.S. Senate in Tuesday’s midterm election is the tip of the rather sizable iceberg that saw the GOP win governorships in the blue states of Illinois, Maryland and Massachusetts. As the losses for Democrats mounted during election night, any number of pundits questioned the Democratic Party’s Obama Avoidance Syndrome.…
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It’s a Mistake for Democratic Candidates to Distance Themselves From Obama
Less than one week before the midterm elections, President Barack Obama has, in many parts of the country, become the man who wasn’t there. Swing-state Democrats are afraid to mention his name in public, and consultants are cringing over interviews in which Obama has proclaimed that the upcoming election represents a referendum on his administration’s…
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Cornel West’s New Book, Black Prophetic Fire, Drives Home His Critique of Obama
Cornel West is back. And with his newest book, Black Prophetic Fire: In Dialogue With and Edited by Christa Buschendorf—a series of conversations about the exemplars of the black prophetic tradition against racial and economic injustice—West reminds us why he remains one of the best-known, most controversial and most important public intellectuals of our time.…
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Ferguson Has Awakened a Larger Struggle for Racial and Economic Justice in America
There’s a social-justice movement taking hold across the nation. Michael Brown’s death, which turned Ferguson, Mo., into a battleground this past summer, has helped catalyze a larger struggle for racial and economic justice in America. And St. Louis, where 18-year-old Vonderrit Myers Jr. was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer, has witnessed roiling…
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After Leon Panetta’s Betrayal, Obama Should Place More Trust in Friends—Not His ‘Team of Rivals’
With little more than two years left in his administration, former administration officials are deserting President Barack Obama like rats on a sinking ship. The latest betrayal comes from Clinton loyalist Leon Panetta—former Democratic congressman, White House chief of staff, CIA director and secretary of defense. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. In…
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Black Artistic and Political Achievement Celebrated by Harvard’s Hutchins Center
On Tuesday evening the second annual Hutchins Center Honors attracted a coterie of political and cultural celebrities to Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre. The recipients—Oprah Winfrey, Harvey Weinstein, Shonda Rhimes, Steve McQueen, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), Harry Belafonte and British architect David Adjaye—represent some of the world’s leading figures in politics, culture and entertainment. The late Maya Angelou…
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Why Every Black Man Needs to Read Charles Blow’s ‘Up From Pain’
Every man in America—particularly every black man in America—should read New York Times op-ed columnist Charles M. Blow’s recent essay, “Up From Pain,” adapted from his forthcoming memoir about identity, sexual abuse and coming to terms with his own identity as a man. Reading it is akin to listening to Nas or Kendrick Lamar at…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
