Commentaries/Opinions

By Julian Bond

The racial picture in America has improved remarkably in my lifetime, so much so that a black man has been elected and re-elected President of the United States — an unthinkable development just a few years ago.

But paradoxically, Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 convinced many that all racial barriers and restrictions had been vanquished and we had entered racial nirvana across the land.

By Greg Kaufmann

“[African-Americans] must march from the rat-infested, overcrowded ghettos to decent, wholesome, unrestricted residential areas disbursed throughout our cities…. They must march from the play areas in crowded and unsafe streets to the newly opened areas in the parks and recreational centers,” said Whitney Young Jr., executive director of the National Urban League.

Spending a morning with Congressman Charles Rangel is to be in touch with a diversity of the Harlem community from a breakfast at Sylvia’s where he was one of several…

By Richard Eskow

Our democracy was under siege even before the Supreme Court’s ruling Tuesday on the Voting Rights Act. This decision caps the Court’s clean sweep on behalf of the United States Chamber of Commerce and is part of a concerted effort to seize democracy on behalf of moneyed interests.

Trayvon Martin’s parents seek justice for a son killed for walking while Black. The Court gutted Voting Rights. Paula Deen is caught using racial slurs.

As the Supreme Court prepares to release its decision in Shelby County v. Holder, this report analyzes new implications — that have so far gone largely unnoted — if the Court…

A dead Chief Justice’s hands has ripped away Blacks’ voting rights.

By Terrance Heath

In “The Unfinished March,” the first in a series reports from the Economic Policy Institute, economist Algernon Austin outlines the “unfinished business” of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

At the close of the introduction to his breathtaking study Black Athena, Martin Bernal stated that “the political purpose of Black Athena is, of course, to lessen European cultural arrogance.”