By Lazone Grays – It has been some time since I wrote about this issue and after watching clips of recent Black leaders I find it necessary to weigh in on this very important and pressing issue. I mean, there is the national perspective, but what about the local and state discussion on this very […]
Commentary
A Stronger America: The Black Agenda
By Curtis R. Monday (TBTNewsService.com) – AMERICA. For some the word personifies opportunity, advancement and achievement. For others, America represents disparities, classism and systemic segregation. America remains the perennial world super power – as America goes so does the rest of the world. However, our country’s position of dominance is being challenged by other nations. […]
The Root: We Can’t Afford To Not Fix Justice System
By Benjamin Todd Jealous and Lateefah Simon (NPR.com) – Reforming the nation’s criminal-justice system is one of the most urgent civil rights issues of our time. One shocking fact illustrates why: More African-American men are entangled in the criminal-justice system today than were enslaved in 1850. How did we get here? The rise in America’s […]
Congressional Budget Crisis
By Chuck Hobbs, Esquire – Whether you support or despise the loose coalition of groups collectively known as the Tea Party, you have to admit that, if nothing else, the rise of this movement has coincided with a greater awareness of politics and the practicality of decisions made by political leaders. When considering the looming […]
Unemployment down, Black unemployment up
By Julianne Malveaux – More than 200,000 jobs were created last month, 216,000 to be exact. Coming after the February lift of more than 200,000 jobs, there are those who are saying that economic recovery is around the corner. I don’t know what corner they are standing on, but the African-American corner took a hit […]
The State of Black America: Washington Are you Listening?
By Marc H. Morial (To Be Equal #14) – “Welcome to America in the second decade of the 21st century. An army of long-term unemployed workers is spread across the land, the human fallout from the Great Recession and long years of misguided economic policies.” From Bob Herbert’s final column for the New York Times […]
60 Minutes’ Byron Pitts and the N-word: The need for top-down reprogramming
By H. Lewis Smith – Visualize a circle about the size of a grapefruit, and imagine that the space inside this circle represents an individual’s total, inclusive realm of knowledge. At the same time, this same individual is also mindful that there is more knowledge outside of their particular circumference of awareness. However, when somebody […]
Demographic Shifts and Black Political Power
Census data on city populations made headlines this week. Washington, DC can apparently only barely be described as “chocolate city” since the African American population is only a scant majority in the city. According to the Washington Post, even the block on which former mayor Marion Barry cut his teeth, married wife Effie, and ran […]
Kansas City’s Green Impact Zone Launches War on Unemployment
By Marc H. Morial (To Be Equal#13) – In the great tradition of America’s global defense of democracy, our nation has now entered another foreign conflict to protect and improve the lives of innocent civilians. While we applaud the inclination to rescue people in peril around the world, we wonder why that same urgency does […]