His “shithole” remark reveals the motive behind his immigration policies. By Jeet Heer — Meeting with leaders from both parties yesterday to craft a bipartisan immigration deal, President Donald Trump uttered words that are likely to define his presidency. When lawmakers raised the issue of protecting immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries, the president reportedly asked, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” He added, “Why do we…
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson — Trump predictably wasted no time in crowing that he was the reason for the big plunge in the black jobless rate. It was part his…
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson — During the 2004 presidential campaign then Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry mildly protested the towering hurdles to ex-felon voting in dozens of states. Kerry raised…
An alleged comment by President Trump about Haiti and AIDS revived a stigma that goes back several decades. By Edwidge Danticat, The New Yorker — In the early nineteen-eighties, soon after cases of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (aids) were first discovered in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control named four groups at “high risk” for the disease: intravenous drug users, homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and Haitians. Haitians were the only ones solely identified by…
By William C. Anderson, Truthout — In November, CNN released footage of Africans being sold into slavery at an auction in Libya, shocking and angering many around the world. The outlet reported witnessing “a dozen men being sold like commodities — some auctioned off for as little as $400.” However, though the auction has been portrayed as part of a recent phenomenon, the disaster that is enslavement is not new at all,…
By Mark Curtis , Tim Jones — Africa is rich – in potential mineral wealth, skilled workers, booming new businesses and biodiversity. Its people should thrive, its economies prosper. Yet…
Some say she blocked qualified Black applicants; Others say that’s not possible. NNPA president says she may have been fighting for diversity By Hazel Trice Edney — Omarosa Manigault Newman, who has resigned under duress from her public liaison job at the White House, is leaving true to form – amidst a cloud of controversy and with sparks flying. The White House has confirmed her resignation effective Jan….
By Bill Fletcher, Jr. Alternet — In the early 2000s, I visited Zimbabwe and met with the leadership of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, the association that joins together…
By Baher Kamal — “European governments are knowingly complicit in the torture and abuse of tens of thousands of refugees and migrants detained by Libyan immigration authorities in appalling conditions in Libya,” Amnesty International charged in the wake of global outrage over the sale of migrants in Libya. In its new report, ‘Libya’s dark web of collusion’, Amnesty International (AI) details how European governments…
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson — Democratic party officials set up a huge table outside a voting precinct in Helena in Shelby County just south of Birmingham. They didn’t try to…
By Michael Harriot — When die-hard Republicans engage in the often fruitless exercise of soliciting black and minority voters to buck the stranglehold of the Democratic voting bloc and join the constantly shrinking tent of the Grand Old Party, they always resort to the same tactics. They declare themselves “the party of Lincoln” and mention how they ended the two-and-a-half centuries-long genocide of chattel slavery. They remind their black and…
By Sasha Gillies-Lekakis — The nation that revolutionary Fidel Castro forged in 1959 is finally coming out of the shadow of Cold War propaganda. From the outset Fidel and his new nation were victims of capitalist paranoia, and we in Australia are still exposed to Cuban issues through this lens. In light of this we must question the validity of what we in the west ‘know’ about Fidel Castro and…