Category: Commentary

Walter Fields Every morning, when I fix my teenage daughter breakfast and drop her off to school, she reminds me that #BlackGirlsMatter. Her journey has not been easy; made all the more difficult by an experience, beginning in middle school and persisting to high school, that threatened to crush her dreams by denying her access […]

One of the many questions provoked by the “open letter” 47 Republican Senators published last week to try to wreck the multinational effort led by the Obama administration to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons is this: Lee A. Daniels Do they understand their obligation to the rule of law? As scholar Daniel W. Drezner […]

James Clingman Ever since President Bill Clinton apologized for the Tuskegee syphilis “experiment” in 1997, we have heard calls for apologies from the government and individuals for a myriad of transgressions against Black people. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that apologies are highly overrated and mean very little when it comes […]

William Barber Looking at our nation and noting where we have come since 1965 gives us reason to celebrate. However, in our celebration we should be mindful that true equality was never achieved, and that instead of moving towards justice we are moving in the other direction. Just a year ago we celebrated the 50th […]

Jesse L. Jackson Sr. President Obama marked the 50th anniversary of Selma by celebrating the ordinary heroes who sacrificed so much to make America better. Noting that nearly 100 members of Congress were in the audience, he urged them to return to Washington to strengthen the Voting Rights Act, weakened by the ill-considered decision of five […]

Matthew C. Whitaker Black History Month is over, but we should move past the standardized foci and platitudes that mark our commemoration. We have a history that challenges us to address vestiges of intolerance and redress the inequality that still undermines African American upward mobility throughout the year. Since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. seems […]

Marc H. Morial A new expression has entered the Westminster lexicon: dog-whistle politics.  It means putting out a message that, like a high-pitched dog-whistle, is only fully audible to those at whom it is directly aimed. The intention is to make potential supporters sit up and take notice while avoiding offending those to whom the […]

Dr. E. Faye Williams TriceEdneyWireService.com – So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen. (Matthew 20:16 – KJV) As a student of The Bible, I’ve engaged in and observed numerous discussions related to the meaning of this biblical passage.  As with most things biblical, the debate […]

Congressman Elijah Cummings As a practicing attorney for two decades, I learned that clear factual evidence was my most powerful ally in achieving justice. It does not surprise me, therefore, that greater access to the facts in the death of Staten Island’s Eric Garner led towider public disagreement with the grand jury’s failure to indict […]

Lee A. Daniels We live in a era when humankind seems awash in war-driven atrocities. Men, and in some instances, boys – for this is, overwhelmingly, a matter of the sins of males – who once lived within the boundaries of decency have dedicated themselves to committing crimes of shocking depravity. Whether driven by tricked-up […]

Kim M. Keenan Selma. For those of a certain age, the word Selma is evocative of a time when people stood against insurmountable odds. It is an ever-lasting illustration of why the right to vote must never be taken for granted. People of all colors bled and died so that we might exercise that quintessential […]