In his classic work, The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon laid out an extensive explanation of how an oppressed people, which does not fight fiercely and self-consciously against its own oppression, will witness the emergence of those who turn the pent-up anger, disdain and righteous rage they have for their oppressor…
For years, a debate simmered around President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (the ACA). Lawsuits challenged mandated healthcare as an unconstitutional intrusion by Congress on individual liberties. States challenged the ACA’s required expansion of Medicaid roles as an intrusion on their sovereignty.
African Americans and Latinos have suffered the most in the Great Recession. They were the first to lose jobs, and the last to find new jobs. They struggle with the highest unemployment, the greatest loss of personal wealth, the highest percentage of families losing their homes.
When Rodney King was snatched up into the whip and whirl of the winds of racial history in this country thru his savage beating in 1991 and the resultant revolt in 1992, it was an invitation of history he had no idea would come, no interest at first in accepting and ultimately, no way to engage it except as the man he was and tried to be.
When young Americans come alive, they transform the possible. We saw that in 2008 when young Americans — the millennial generation of 18- to 29-year-olds — voted in large numbers (larger than the aging baby boomers), and overwhelmingly for Barack Obama.
With all due respect to the eminence and awesome insightfulness of W.E.B. Du- Bois, it is not only de-centered and dislocated Blacks who suffer a “double-consciousness,” but also self-centered and supremacy-committed Whites …
There is a real drug war being waged on our border with Mexico. Drug cartels are clashing, U.S. agents on this side are struggling to keep the violence out of America, often without success, and the innocent are dying.
Ai-Jen Poo leads the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and she is a powerful and passionate advocate for the rights of domestic workers. Who are these folks? They are the private household workers (maids) who propped up inept women in the movie The Help. They are the home health aides who take care of our elders […]
We shouldn’t trade in the legacy of the New Deal and Fair Deal for a Raw Deal. It follows from the Declaration of Independence that declared that “all men are created equal,” expanded over time to include all men and women. It follows from the Pledge of Allegiance that promises “liberty and justice for all.” Not for a few. Not for most. For all.
The Institute of the Black World 21st Century has just completed Town Hall Meetings in Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh and Baltimore to increase public awareness about the devastating impact of the “War on Drugs” on the Black community as a racially biased strategy/policy.
It is in this month of June that we pay special homage to Kwame Ture (June 29, 1941— November 15, 1998), tall and unwavering tree in the revered forest of Pan-Africanist freedom fighters; tireless unifying organizer of our people in their righteous pursuit of liberation, justice and power over their destiny and daily lives…
The most conservative Supreme Court in the past four decades is poised to overturn the already limited affirmative action provisions in the latter part of this year (after October 1) unless good sense visits one or two of them and they vote in favor of student body diversity instead of against. Since Bush-appointed justices John […]