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Featured Post
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The Democratic Party "takes impeachment off the table," finances "an illegal and immoral war," fails to "even mention Hurricanes Katrina and Rita survivors in their Congressional agenda for the first 100 days," and aids and abets "illegal spying on us" - yet has the gall to call itself the party of "change" and "hope." As Democrats prepared their corporate-financed nominating convention, Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney told protestors: "We declare our willingness to be radical in pursuit of peace and in our hunger for justice. We can see clearly now who the real stickup artists are and that's why we're in Denver!"
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Don't lower yourself to speak to rappers! Just because you are African-American, don't allow the press to make you step down from the plate of being one of the most powerful men in the world to address a comment from a rapper, no matter how great he or she is. If the Dixie Chicks stand up and attack McCain, the press already knows it's almost worthless to ask him about it. He wouldn't have a clue who they are and, in the end, and he wouldn't care about what they said because he is applying for the job of the most powerful man in the world. He knows it's politics as usual.
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During its golden age Black radio was exciting because it allowed listeners to hear new music; it made listeners enthusiastic about the listening experience because the jocks viewed their uniqueness as a strength. Now we’re forced to hear the same ten songs by the same five artists over and over, played by disc jockeys who promise not to talk too much. Today’s mainstream Black radio does not deal with Black issues in the unapologetic manner that helped it make a connection with the community. Bob Law’s show, Night Talk, was popular not solely because it was syndicated. It was popular because Bob Law’s approach to politics and culture was relevant, and the show’s content was potent.
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Past Featured Post
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Young people between the ages of 18 and 29 who have not gone to college are not involved in the political process. When people are not involved in their government, it is not good for democracy. Moreover, if people who have completed a sentence from felony charges are still not voting because they continue to live with the stigma of the past, it is not good for humanity. We are living in a country where 67 percent of young people ages 18-29 who have not gone to college do not believe they can make a difference in their communities. These sentiments are evidence that we are doing something wrong.
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According to the popular narrative, hip-hop grew out of gang culture in the South Bronx. One of its pioneers - gang leader Afrika Bambaataa, who had turned his life around - used hip-hop to get people out of gangs and into something more positive. Bambaataa had led the Black Spades in the Bronx River Houses project before deciding to take his followers in a new direction, first by forming "the Organization. " Later, after learning about the Zulus of South Africa, who fought colonial rule, Bambaataa transformed the Organization into the Mighty Zulu Nation, now known as the Universal Zulu Nation. It remains not only the oldest but the largest hip-hop organization, with chapters on every continent and tens of thousands of members.
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With just ninety days left in the election it's come down to this: our energy policy and a good deal of this presidential campaign are being discussed through the lens of Paris Hilton. What a big goof it all is! If you just ignore all the soldiers and civilians dying in the Mideast, and all the millions losing their homes and their jobs at home, you could really see the lighter side of it all. Of course, it's not exactly a surprise that the Republican election machine would resort to trying to make the entire election into an issueless sideshow. I mean, what else do they have?
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What brought the democratic era to an end was a split between the communists and the social democrats, i.e., the left and the near left and the liberals, which permitted Hitler’s National Socialists in a coalition with the conservatives and nationalists to win the election, even though the left-center coalition had more voters objectively. It was the split which allowed the right to consolidate power. There is no way Obama is even in the presidential race condemning Israel or embracing Cuba. Not to know this is not to know where you are or where you have been for the last 40 years.
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Times are tougher economically in this country than perhaps they've been for quite a long time. We've all seen the stats -- median income has declined by almost $2,500 over the past seven years, we have a zero personal savings rate in America for the first time since the Great Depression, and 5 million people have slipped below the poverty level since the beginning of the decade. And stats aside, most everyone out there knows what the deal is.
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"Today's reality is harsh. But what's even harder for many to accept and admit is that our quality of life today is the making of the Democratic and Republican Parties. What our country has become through their public policy is reflective of their values. We will never get a United States that is reflective of different values if we continue to do the same thing. Those who delivered us into this mess cannot be trusted to get us out of it. That's why I signed up to do something I've never done before so I can have something I've never had before: My country, made in the likeness of the values of the Green Party."
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Helms' death Friday, at age 86, brings America a small step closer to the end of the post-antebellum era in our politics that saw the men who had battled to deny the franchise to millions of Americans because of the color of their skin -- and who fought even more aggressively to deny adequate education, nutrition and health care to African-American children -- make the easy transition to leadership positions in the "modern" Republican Party.
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In our news media, in our press, those who wield power were, in the lead-up to Iraq, given the opportunity to present their views as a coherent whole, to connect the dots, as they saw the dots and the connections... no matter how much these views may have flown in the face of precedent, established practice — or, indeed, the facts (as we are reminded, yet again, by the just-released Senate report on the administration's use of pre-war intelligence). The powerful are given this opportunity still, in ways big and small, despite what you may hear about the "post-Katrina" press.
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Scott McClellan's book will not result in anything as heavy as the resignation of George Bush, but it will intensify the anger felt by those who see his administration as one dedicated to hoodwinking and bamboozling the public at signal moments and moving to destroy any who are thought to be so disloyal to the White House that they might actually do the job asked of them. McClellan is already being attacked by the human canines of Fox News who are paid to defend the Republican Party at all costs.
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When it comes to black America, the movies are stagnating. Well, when it comes to any nonwhite male subject matter at the movies, the pickings are slim. But there's such a wealth of black stars, producers, and directors that the scarcity of movies - big-ticket or small, serious or light - focused on the lives of black people, is surreal. There's a gaping entertainment void. It's not just the lack of quantity. It's the lack of variety. Despite the usual death notices posted for hip-hop, black popular music is alive and well.
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Malcolm Little was born in 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska, to Earl Little and Louise Helen (née Norton). He lived briefly at 3448 Pinkney Street in the North Omaha neighborhood. His father was an outspoken Baptist lay speaker and supporter of Marcus Garvey, as well as a member of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Three of Earl Little's brothers died violently at the hands of white men, and one of his uncles had been lynched. Earl Little had three children (Ella, Mary, and Earl, Jr.) by a previous marriage before he married Malcolm's mother. From his second marriage he had seven children, of whom Malcolm was the fourth.
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They are anti-democratic because they scoff at this basic truth: Education is the key to social mobility in our country. The stereotyped working class has no innate limits. It has produced the majority of doctors, engineers, architects, educators and others who realized the dreams of their families by studying hard and moving into careers quite different from those of their parents and their neighbors. Education has always been viewed as suspect by everyone from slave owners to totalitarians. Wherever in the world you find them, they share one hostility: They hate books.
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The median black household income has risen from $22,300 (in 2006 dollars) in 1967 to $32,100 in 2006. Black life expectancy has soared from 34 in 1900 to 73 today. Most blacks today are middle class. Yes, say the pessimists, but the gap between what blacks and whites earn and what they learn, which narrowed steadily between the 1940s and the late 1980s, has more or less frozen since then. Blacks' median household income is still only 63% of whites'. Academically, black children at 17 perform no better than a white 13-year-old. Blacks die, on average, five years earlier than whites. And though the black middle class has grown immensely, many blacks are still stuck in crime-scorched, nearly jobless ghettos.
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Among the many other important issues overshadowed by the good reverend is a legitimate dispute between the presidential candidates over a proposed gasoline tax holiday, to run through the summer. Hillary Clinton and John McCain favor this dopey, irresponsible proposal, which would save individual motorists a grand total of $28, but which would result in $9 billion in lost tax revenues, much of it targeted for infrastructure needs.
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"The legislation and histories of the time, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument... Altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
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When cops go on trial for overuse of deadly force, their victims are generally young blacks and Latinos. The attorneys that defend them are top gun defense attorneys and have had much experience defending police officers accused of misconduct. Police unions pay them and they spare no expense in their defense. The cops rarely serve any pre-trial jail time, and are released on ridiculously low bail. If the cops are tried by a jury, police defense attorneys seek to get as many middle-class whites on the panel as possible. The presumption is that they are much more likely to believe the testimony of police and prosecution witnesses than black witnesses, defendants, or even the victims.
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I’ve never thought Bill Cosby’s explanation for black poverty was right, but I never thought he was wrong for stressing personal accountability. Last week, both Ta-Nehisi Coates and John McWhorter reenergized the Cosby debate and got closer to the truth behind Cosby’s arguments than anybody else. Yet, neither sees the most logical reason for the increase in problems poor black folk experience. An increase in the size of the black sub-working class.
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Over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I've watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name "Farrakhan" out of nowhere, well that's when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the "F" word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan.
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One thing I know about money is that it can empower and liberate you. The problem is that money can also enslave you. Many black professors at top white universities fear losing their precious jobs if they speak out on social injustice. So, we spend our entire careers writing research papers that no one ever reads, while a world that starves for our intellect dies around us. There are hoards of angry black middle class Americans who fear opening their mouths because they won’t be able to keep up the payments on the Lexus. We all understand, on some level, the tradeoffs that Oprah, Johnson and Obama are forced to make.
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If the United States cannot close its trade deficit, it is unlikely that the U.S. dollar can remain the world reserve currency. If the dollar were to lose the reserve currency role, the U.S. government would not be able to finance its annual red ink budget by borrowing from foreigners, as the U.S. saving rate is about zero, and the United States would not be able to pay its import bill in its own currency. From March 2007 to March 2008, the U.S. economy created 1.5 million new jobs (in services). Legal and illegal immigration and work visas for foreigners exceed U.S. job creation.
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It wasn't just the reverse racial numbers for Clinton and Obama. Obama does incredibly well in netting the vote of college-educated, upscale whites. But Clinton does just as well in bagging support from lower-income, downscale, and rural white voters. This has huge potential downside implications for Obama in a head to head battle with John McCain in the red states. A significant percent of the voters there are lower income, rural and less educated whites. Obama banks that he can pry one or two of the red states from the GOP.
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How much do you really know about what's happening in the world. Depending on your level of immersion in corporate media, your relationship with reality may be quite tenuous. The problem is made especially difficult by the nonsensical language employed by people in power. For example, Condoleezza Rice speaks of an American "birth defect." Is she talking about herself, or does the statement contain levels of previously undiscovered wisdom on her part? And how many times can Barack Obama insult an old friend before it appears they never were friends
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Rev. King dreamed, but more critically he marched; he organized; he acted. He turned the race "conversation" into revolutionary legislation that would strike down centuries of slavery and segregation: the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court Decision; the '55 court decision validating the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Rosa Park's refusal to sit at the back of the bus. From the marching feet in Selma came the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Down the highway to Montgomery came the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And from the Chicago rallies came the 1968 Fair Housing Act, the last of the monumental civil rights legislation that sprang from King.
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I am a supporter of Obama because I believe he is the right person to lead the country at this time. He offers a rare opportunity for the country and the world to start over, and to do better. It is a deep sadness to me that many of my feminist white women friends cannot see him. Cannot see what he carries in his being. Cannot hear the fresh choices toward Movement he offers. That they can believe that millions of Americans –black, white, yellow, red and brown - choose Obama over Clinton only because he is a man, and black, feels tragic to me.
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An assassin's bullet struck down the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. 40 years ago, but a great many blacks - protesters and preachers, journalists and judges, authors and activists - think America's just starting to fulfill King's dream. Thousands are set to converge on Memphis this week for a solemn commemoration of the assassination on April 4. Each will have his or her personal and political interpretations of what King's stormy, splendid life and sudden, tragic death meant.
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Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white
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In Baltimore, where over the last twenty years Times Mirror and the Tribune Company have combined to reduce the newsroom by forty percent, all of the above stories pretty much happened. A mayor was elected governor while his police commanders made aggravated assaults and robberies disappear. School principals in Baltimore and elsewhere in Maryland were obliged to teach test questions to pump test scores at the expense of meaningful curricula and then politicians took credit for the limited gains that were, of course, unsustainable as the students aged into middle school.
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The war in Iraq will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers not hundreds of billions of dollars, but an astonishing $2 trillion, and perhaps more. There has been very little in the way of public conversation, even in the presidential campaigns, about the consequences of these costs, which are like a cancer inside the American economy.
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This is why I say it’s the ballot or the bullet. It’s liberty or it’s death. It’s freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody. America today finds herself in a unique situation. Historically, revolutions are bloody. Oh, yes, they are. They haven’t never had a blood-less revolution, or a non-violent revolution. That don’t happen even in Hollywood. You don’t have a revolution in which you love your enemy, and you don’t have a revolution in which you are begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it. Revolutions overturn systems. Revolutions destroy systems.
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“Poverty in early childhood poisons the brain.” That was the opening of an article in Saturday’s Financial Times, summarizing research presented last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. As the article explained, neuroscientists have found that “many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development.” The effect is to impair language development and memory — and hence the ability to escape poverty — for the rest of the child’s life.
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While Bush and the Saudi princes do their sword-dance (ironic given the $20 billion Saudi-U..S. weapons deal Bush brings), the economy - and the ecology -burns. Housing foreclosures are spiking; manufacturing flees to China; gas prices rise; neighborhoods decline into hellholes for survival; and schools resemble training camps for prison. And prison? Perhaps they are America's lone growth industry.
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Both Clinton and Obama had previously agreed to abide by the decision of the Democratic Party to deny seats to delegates from Florida and Michigan. The DNC’s refusal to seat the delegates was a punishment to Party leaders in those states who insisted on moving their primaries ahead of Super Tuesday. The punishment of course fell unfairly on the voters of those states (and Mr. Bond’s concern would perhaps have been more usefully articulated when that decision was made).
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Elected to end the war, Democrats have surrendered to Bush on Iraq and betrayed the peace movement for their own political ends - The story of how the Democrats finally betrayed the voters who handed them both houses of Congress a year ago is a depressing preview of what's to come if they win the White House. And if we don't pay attention to this sorry tale now, while there's still time to change our minds about whom to nominate, we might be stuck with this same bunch of spineless creeps for four more years.
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About 5.3 million U.S. citizens are ineligible to vote due to felony disenfranchisement; 2 million of them are African-American. Of these, 1.4 million are African-American men, which translates into an incredible 13 percent of that population, a rate seven times higher than in the overall population. Forty-eight states have some version of felony disenfranchisement on the books. All bar voting from prison, then go on to bar participation while on parole or probation.
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Preliminary results of the most intense primary in recent memory indicate that predictions of a monolithic Latino "firewall" for Clinton have fallen short. The candidates split key Latino states in different parts of the country. Clinton won states like New York and New Jersey while Obama won states like Colorado and Illinois. Exit poll results also demolished widely-held notions that Latinos are unwilling to support a black candidate.
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As president, Barack Obama will break the Washington gridlock to finally make health care what it should be in America. He will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion and bridge the divisions of race, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation that plague our country. He will end a war in Iraq that he has always stood against, that has cost us the lives of thousands of our sons and daughters, and that America never should have fought.
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They should stop, take a deep breath and acknowledge the obvious: the way to put money into the hands of working people is to make sure they have access to good jobs at good wages. That has long been known, but it hasn’t been the policy in this country for many years. Big business and the federal government have worked hand in hand to squeeze the daylights out of working people, stripping them (in an era of downsizing and globalization) of much of their bargaining power while ferociously pursuing fiscal policies that radically favored the privileged few.
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Millions of people across America and throughout the world are eager to hear and learn how you propose to provide effective leadership as the next President of the United States on the issues of overcoming poverty, addressing global warming and protecting the environment, promoting sustainable economic development, and striving to establish world peace. We have six specific questions for you to answer.
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We all know that Bill was only a pseudo-black president. So when the first pseudo-black president starts playa hatin’ on the man who could be the for real first black president, it’s time to leave irony aside and talk facts. Let’s begin by putting to bed the story of Bill Clinton as beloved race-man. At best, Bill Clinton’s record on race is checkered.
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In The N Word, Jabari Asim picks apart the most volatile, multi-defined and inciteful word in African American culture. A former deputy book editor for The Washington Post and now editor of The Crisis magazine, Asim refers to black face lyrics, civil war novels, lynching records, and even conversations overheard in the oval office to put the "N" word in perspective.
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Twice before, we have begun the process to stop this man, and twice we have failed. Eight years of our lives as Americans will have been lost, the world left in upheaval against us... and yet now, today, we hope against hope that our moment has finally arrived, that the amazingly powerful force of the Republican Party will somehow be halted. But we know that the Democrats are experts at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and if there's a way to blow this election, they will find it and do it with gusto.
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Senator Obama's intelligence, passion and quality of character can inspire us to recapture our own potential for greatness. And after all these years of darkness, there is no alternative other than to correct our trajectory with someone who can elevate our common goals -- the American Dream. For the American Dream to survive, this era demands a new president who will include all of us in the debate over our future, whether or not we agree on every issue.
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The serious charges against Cheney involve alleged crimes that are central to his duties of Vice-President; namely war and peace, the widespread violations of civil liberties, and the security of the United States and our covert agents.
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As a lawyer, the last 7 years of the Bush administration have unraveled everything I learned about the rule of law and its fundamental role in a democratic nation. From one day to the next my mind has been blown by the licenses taken by the powerful, and by the timidity of those of us who’ve watched in disbelief and silence, as our nation has increasingly become a nation of men, rather than one of laws. The most basic rudiments of law and procedure have been routinely rejected or debased by this Administration.
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I know this is supposed to be a column about the music business, but this time I'm gonna change it up a bit because there's something that's been on my mind lately that's got me stumped. Maybe all y'all who write comments on this blog can help me understand: Since when did some random statement cooked up by people in the news media and the blogosphere start trumping words from the horse's mouth?
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Can Democrats get the votes they need simply because they're not Republicans? You might think so in this presidential campaign. African-American and urban votes are critical to any Democratic victory. Bill Clinton won two terms without winning the most white votes. His margin was the overwhelming support of black voters. George Bush learned that lesson; that's why his campaigns spent so much effort suppressing the black vote in key states like Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004.
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The term "'b**** fighting" is what some women privately call a pier room brawl that a pack of girls or young women engage in with one another. The term and the behavior is loathsome and offensive. But it was that sort of brawl that claimed the life of 23-year-old Shontae Blanche, and even more shockingly, her 7 month unborn child.
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The hip hop artist Nas, styling himself as both a political scientist and sorcerer, theorizes that relentless repetition of the word "nigger" will somehow rob the term of its "power." Poof! - and the evil legacy of centuries melts away like the Wicked Witch of the West in Wizard of Oz. Nas's constant incantation of "Nigger" in his new album of the same name meets with the approval of many of his peers among rap music magicians, who point out that ritual chanting of the N-word is guaranteed to cause mounds of cash to appear.
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If we were serious about increasing student academic achievement, we would see to it that all women get top-rate pre-natal and post-natal care, especially single-mothers of future students. Instead, legislation that would increase the number of children with access to health care -- indispensable for physical and emotional health -- gets vetoed in order to appease the private insurance industry.
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As hip-hop Web sites show, the sheer stupidity of a millionaire rapper purchasing firearms and silencers proved a great deficit in that large area we all know as common sense. So it was stupidity, not racism or any abuse of justice or excessive force, that shook the hip-hop world.
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The idea is that if radio stations and Viacom music channels can play the "bitch, ho, nigga" content of gangsta rappers, then what is so bad about Imus' comment? If the Black community apparently accepts such language from its own, then why get upset when Don Imus says it?
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Bush’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has initiated a scheme to radically rewrite media ownership rules so that one corporation can own the daily newspapers, the weekly “alternative” newspaper, the city magazine, suburban publications, the eight largest radio stations, the dominant broadcast and cable television stations, popular internet news and calendar sites, billboards and concert halls in even the largest American city.
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Let's be very clear. A vicious and premeditated class warfare is being waged today against the American middle class. Poverty is increasing and tens of millions are working longer hours for lower wages. Meanwhile, the richest people have not had it so good since the 1920s, and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider.
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It was galling to hear the top gun Republican presidential candidates Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson weasel out of the Republican presidential debate scheduled for Sept. 27 at historically black Morgan State University with the well-worn ploy of a scheduling conflict.
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As “bad” as the New York City School system is said to be, one would think that any Principal that took his school from first to last would be given the benefit of the doubt when unproven charges are levied against him. Well not in the case of Queens Principal Shango Blake whose school is no.1 in District 29 since his arrival.
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US contractors in Iraq reportedly have their own motto: "What happens here today, stays here today." That should be chilling to everyone who believes in transparency and accountability of US operations and taxpayer funded activities-- not to mention the human rights of the Iraqis who have fallen victim to these incidents and have been robbed of any semblance of justice.
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Across this country, there are two justice systems -- one for blacks and one for whites. Black (and Latino) young men are not more likely to commit crimes than whites. But they are more likely to be stopped by police, more likely to be arrested if stopped, more likely to be charged if arrested, more likely to be jailed if convicted, more likely to be charged with felonies, and more likely to be tried and imprisoned as adults.
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There are two reasons for their keeping hands off. Federal prosecutors are loath to step on the toes of police and prosecutors in criminal cases, no matter how badly the crime is tainted by race. Federal prosecutors flatly said that William's assailants are more likely to be convicted and get stiff sentences in state court. That makes perfectly good legal and political sense.
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Like Pontius Pilate washing his hands of responsibility, too many in the Washington press corps want to pretend they are leaving the question of "what is truth" to their readers -- refusing to admit that there is even such a thing as truth. It is particularly troubling that so many in a profession dedicated to the idea that there is a truth to be ferreted out
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One of the most fruitful aspects of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual resides in the fact that Cruse took black intellectuals and cultural workers and activists seriously. For him, they comprised the vanguard of efforts to transform America’s democratic culture. This is especially significant since the activities and achievements of black intellectuals remains contested terrain in a society that devalues and denigrates black intellectual capacity
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They both missed the real story and tragedy of Katrina, and that's that the naked face of poverty that shocked the world two years ago remains just as naked and shameful two years later. And Bush and the Democrats are to blame for it. For a few weeks after the shocking scenes of the black poor fleeing for their lives from the floodwaters in New Orleans, Bush and the Democrats talked tough about a full court press on poverty.
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“It’s stunning,” said New York’s Gov. Eliot Spitzer. “He says he’s going to veto health care for kids because it’s too expensive at the same time that these continuing resolutions for the war, where we don’t even know what the cost is, are going through unabated. This is insanity.
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PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) wants the NFL to "add cruelty to animals -- in all its forms -- to its personal conduct policy." What, for PETA, is "cruelty to animals -- in all its forms"? According to its Web site, we should not eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment or abuse animals in any way.
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Soon to be former Atlanta Falcons star quarterback Michael Vick never had a chance. The instant word publicly leaked out that he'd be slapped with an indictment by the feds, he could kiss his football cleats good-bye. The indictment was just a formality.
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But we, policy-makers at every level of government, should also be questioning the "domestic surge" at home in the so-called war on drugs and urban crime. There are more guns, more technology, more cameras scanning streets, and more money spent on jails, prisons and juvenile facilities every day. The cost to American taxpayers also rises every day.
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You may not realize that part of the strategy of the government is to put you all against each other. If the enemy sees you trying to organize, he will send people to organize you. He says, “You have a spirit to come together, but I am going to make sure that whoever leads you is my man.” This is the way the enemy thinks. He always sets up a counterweight or a countermovement.
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No matter how many times a disturbed white male shoots up a school, church or workplace, bombs an abortion clinic or is arrested for being a serial killer, nobody raises questions like: is something wrong with white suburban culture? The response is either: that's one sick individual, or it just goes to show you how bad society is getting.
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Now I'm not one to excuse the inexcusable. And trust me cheating, doing cruel things to animals and squandering precious opportunities to do good and take things to a higher level after you've made millions and have gained lots of fame are among the things that make my blood boil. But there's a couple of things I wanna get off my chest.
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As a grieving, grateful city celebrates the sacrifice of Police Officer Russel Timoshenko, who was suddenly, brutally murdered in the streets of Brooklyn last week, the cry goes out for the millionth time: Where are the leaders - the men and institutions - taking action to bring order to New York's violent neighborhoods?
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Having spent a fair amount of time in occupied Iraq, I now find living in the United States nothing short of a schizophrenic experience. Life in Iraq was traumatizing. It was impossible to be there and not be affected by apocalyptic levels of violence and suffering, unimaginable in this country.
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The mind of the racist is an intricate web of delusions, in which white majorities are always under siege, preyed upon by dark hordes intent on destruction. Anti-racist activist Tim Wise explores the tortuous mental pathways that lead millions of whites to conclude they are victims and turn tragedies like the Virginia Tech murders into calls for racial revenge and redemption.
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What do Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, and President George W. Bush have in common? They both think they can dis Cindy Sheehan and count on gossip columnists like the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank to trivialize a historic moment.
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It is long past time for America to grasp that Bush's decision to pound the Muslim world into submission -- not just in Iraq, but in Lebanon and in Palestine -- is not the solution, it is the problem. We have turned an entire region, and the adherents of one of the three largest religions in the world, against America and everything that it represents, including democracy
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Sexism, very much like racism, has very sublime expressions that are not always seen in a Nelly video, a Lil' Jon record or a television show by Snoop Dogg. The truth is sexism is an ugly beast. Sexism can be in the condescending smile I give my wife when we play chess. It can also be in the frustration I feel when she wins!
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Stadiums are sporting shrines to the dogma of trickle-down economics. In the past 10 years, more than $16 billion of the public’s money has been spent for stadium construction and upkeep from coast to coast. Though some cities are beginning to resist paying the full tab, any kind of subsidy is a fool’s investment
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The Bushies, it seems, like starting fights, but they don’t believe in paying any of the cost ... Above all, they don’t believe that they or their friends should face any ... penalties for trivial sins like distorting intelligence to get America into an unnecessary war, or totally botching that war’s execution
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Something very important is happening in popular culture, and the argument that is gaining more and more ground against hip hop can no longer be shouted down by those who point out its rags to riches stories. The ultimate question is how many of those rappers who come from the bottom are covered with even more filth because of what they had to sell to become wealthy.
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Our worst nightmares are becoming reality as George Bush's U.S. Supreme Court strangles the very concept of due process and nonracial administration of justice. In its latest frothings, the High Court ruled that workers must be clairvoyant in order to win job discrimination cases - requiring they file charges within 180 days of the offense, thus leaving no room to prove a pattern and practice of discrimination.
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Blacks have been loudly protesting illegal immigration since it became a stormy national issue and ripped apart Congress last year. In May 2006, an odd assemblage of writers, preachers, a homeless rights advocate, professional anti-immigration advocates, and a few local black community residents from the Washington, D.C. area, grabbed some momentary camera time
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The media's fixation with pretty white girls in jeopardy is so prevalent there's a name for it. Missing White Girl Syndrome. Certain girls of a certain image get disproportionate play. Meanwhile, missing and exploited minority children are gone -- forgotten as even Chandra Levy was and JonBenet was
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While the rest of the country is dealing with the here and now -- exemplified by Bush's puny approval ratings and this new poll showing rural voters turning against the GOP's handling of Iraq -- the Beltway's Democratic dinosaurs are acting like it's 2002. For them, Bush still has credibility on Iraq, Democrats still need to tread lightly in opposing the war for fear of alienating red state and swing voters, and Iraq is still a right vs left issue.
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Malcolm delivered this speech on the very night that his home in New York was firebombed. He was terribly tired and worried, yet he still showed up all the way in Detroit-- this shows his extreme courage and determination. This is probably his last speech outside of New York, and displays his intellect and honesty, as well as his ideas and understanding close to his death.
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With all the talk about hip-hop activism, I have to ask, "Where is women’s activism within hip-hop?" From my vantage point, what the recent Don Imus affair brought painfully to light is that generally, black women within hip-hop are to be ogled in music videos, insulted in the name of free speech and discussed by pundits, but rarely are they given access to the major media outlets
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While many believe that Arab and Latin American societies have a better track record in regard to race than the United States, Dr. Carlos Moore, resident scholar at Brazil's Universidade do Estado da Bahia, contends that this impression is wrong. Moore, a black man raised in pre-Castro Cuba, believes that while these societies may look color blind on the surface, race actually dominates every aspect of social and political life
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"I have tried every (day) since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives."
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Having elsewhere looked at the function of mass media as primary mechanisms of the maintenance of colony, recent events have again emerged requiring further investigation into the function of corporate control over the cultural expression of colonized populations.
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It is with the greatest respect and adoration of your loving spirit that I write you. As a young child, I would sit beside my mother everyday and watch your program. As a young adult, with children of my own, I spend much less time in front of the television, but I am ever thankful for the positive effect that you continue to have on our nation, history and culture.
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Paris Hilton drove while drunk, was given every opportunity to correct course, and is now being punished for her recklessness. George Bush, while dry drunk, drove our country into a disastrous war, has been given every opportunity to correct course, but seems determined to keep his foot on the pedal.
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Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel is right to be scared of most of the Democratic field of presidential candidates. Except for Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the contenders jockey for the title of most-likely-to-attack-Iran. Impeachment "is the only way to discredit Republicans enough to insure a Democratic victory in 2008,"
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Suicide by educator is a slow, gradual process. It may lead to an emotional, spiritual or physical death. Children who seek suicide by educator may eventually drop out, go to prison or be killed. At one time or another, teachers may ask themselves, “Why do so many children commit educational suicide?
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Yes indeed Snitching is big business in more ways than you can possible know. Its just a shame that 60 Minutes got Cam'ron to talk about such a serious issue, cause from what they showed, he definitely didn't break it down the way he should've. Well don't fret 'cause we break the whole thing down in this eye opening interview on Hard Knock Radio
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In the summer of 2006, a study by the Brookings Institution found that New York City had the smallest proportion of middle-income families of any metropolitan area in the county, and that the number of middle-income neighborhoods in the city was shrinking rapidly.
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African Americans are the group that most supports the rights of Palestinians to be treated justly - which makes Blacks the most vulnerable targets of the Israel lobby. Effectively controlling the U.S. Congress, the Israel lobby creates endless enemies for the United States, abroad, endangering every American citizen.
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It's no secret that the period of time between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq represents one of the greatest collapses in the history of the American media. Every branch of the media failed, from daily newspapers, magazines and Web sites to television networks, cable channels and radio.
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Now that Imus is officially out, the question is will Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and the civil rights leaders, black professional and women's groups march on say a company such as Interscope Geffen A&M Records and demand that they pull Snoop Dogg's forthcoming album, The Big Squeeze?
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In an absolutely mind bending turn of events, Don Imus is now a man without a job. A week after calling the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy headed hos," the man once hailed by Time Magazine as one of the most influential people in the country, is officially off the air.
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