As we mark this year’s Black History Month II: Women Focus, we will again pay rightful homage to the pioneers, heroines, and way-makers who made ways out of no- way, who opened up ways for so many others, breaking down barriers, crossing boundaries, creating and increasing opportunities for women and girls, and others marginalized and excluded, and making great sacrifices and strides in the service of women, our people and humankind.
For someone who made history as his state’s first African-American to serve in Congress and developed an international reputation for his work in support of Africa, Donald Payne was a pretty unassuming man.
No matter what we think, say or write about the movie Red Tails, about its message, meaning, worthiness or weight, the discussion is ultimately and unavoidably about us, about how we perceive and understand ourselves, what we accept as real and rightful representations of us, and how we read and relate to the historical and current lived experience and initiatives of our lives in the context of both oppression and “constrained freedom.”
Franklin Graham and the hate behind the southern evangelical Christian brand.
As we marked this National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, we could not avoid noticing that the issue of HIV/AIDS has become less urgent on the country’s agenda, that one of the once most vocal and active racial groups now has sufficient government monies, medicines and means to move on to advocate for other things, while real and potential Black victims are left to fend for themselves and make do or die on the remaining meager resources. For this is the way power and race work in this country and the world, in spite of self-deluding post-racial prattle and misconceptions about negotiation instead of struggle, and transactional trade without the power of an engaged people.
I still have not gone to see the movie, The Help. I read the book and that was enough for me. I read a book where a white women fully engaged herself in cultural appropriation, putting 21st century voices into 1960s throats. Which black women, in 1960, would have said that black men left their […]
“Islam sees him as a son of Islam … I can’t say categorically that (the president is not Muslim) because Islam has gotten a free pass under Obama.” – Rev. Franklin Graham
Those words, and others, were spoken by Rev. Franklin Graham on the MSNBC program “Morning Joe” yesterday morning…
I am grateful and appreciative of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the man who claimed Negro History Week, which later changed to Black History Month. From a week to a month, but we need to rock the year, every year, because there are so many opportunities to celebrate Black History. The organization that Dr. Woodson founded, […]
Last night’s compelling PBS documentary Slavery by Another Name is a painful reminder of the depths to which this nation invested in white supremacy. The story of how Blacks in post-Civil War America were cast into corporate slavery and exploited by the “rule of law” to enrich economic elites and provide poor whites the comfort of relative advantage by race should widen the public’s understanding of racial disparities that are evident today.
PBS documentary presents another missing link in the history of our nation.
CNN’s Roland Martin is suspended for anti-gay Tweets during Super Bowl.