South Carolina on My Mind: Alvin Greene

South Carolina politics provide the richest commentary on the unthinkable. The June 8th South Carolina primary have left the Democrats in a conundrum. South Carolina Democrats have been quick to dump on Alvin Greene, a candidate that seemed to emerge from under a rock to become the Democratic Senate nominee to face Republican Senator Jim [...]

Two Young Females Are Crossing the Street..

By now, we’ve all seen or heard about the video showing a police officer punching a woman in the face. It is ugly all around. But these women are not blameless. A Belle in Brooklyn has captured my thoughts exactly. There is no defending the actions of this police officer. But the incredible gall of [...]

Reflecting on The Moynihan Report

Sometimes the truth ain’t pretty. And we can’t ignore it or dismiss it just because we don’t like the messenger. Such was the case with the infamous Moynihan Report several decades ago. The report detailed what would become of the black community should the traditional black American family life continue to deteriorate. Columnist Clarence Page [...]

Friday Reading: Black Women See Fewer Black Men at the Altar

The New York Times writes on new research indicating that black men are increasingly marrying women of other races.  Based on research from Pew Research Center, 1 out of every 5 black men married outside their race in 2008: It is a familiar lament of single African-American women: where are the “good” black men to [...]

Why Does Bill Maher Get A Pass?

I don’t care if you’re well-meaning, think you’re cool or hip, or are a flaming liberal.  This is unacceptable and the silence in the response to Bill Maher’s rhetoric is deafening!  I guess everyone would have been cool if Bill Maher said what Glenn Beck did about President Obama’s daughter too.  Someone explain to me why [...]

Complicated Relationship Between Blacks and Latinos

We’ve written in the past about the complicated relationship between the African Diaspora in Latin America and their lighter Hispanic brethren. Earl Ofari Hutchinson captures the signature uneasiness in our relationship through Univision’s portrayal of African World Cup teams and questions why Univision continues such rogue stereotypes when African American civil rights leaders are working [...]

Racial Wealth Disparities Report Underscores Immediate Need for Civil Rights Intervention

Hmm, as much as I find the study disheartening, I do not agree on Reverend Jackson’s diagnosis of the problem, nor the solution. I wish it was as simple as enforcing civil rights laws. That in no way goes to problems associated with poor education, poor life choices, and unfortunately, poor leadership. A new study [...]

On Marriage, Motherhood and Moynihan

HT to Booker Rising for highlighting the following opinion piece by Clarence Page on marriage: Compared to 20 years ago, today’s mothers of newborns are older, more educated, less often white, more often Hispanic — and less often married. A record 41 percent of American births in 2008 were born to single mothers, according to [...]

Africans and the Slave Trade

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. writes in last week’s New York Times about the dirty little secret of the role of Africans in the slave trade: How did slaves make it to these coastal forts? The historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood of Boston University estimate that 90 percent of those shipped to the New World [...]

Black Tea Partiers

Tim Wise from Cosmic Navel Lint imagines what would happen if Tea Partiers were Black: Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the [...]

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