Category: Commentary

America’s children will return to school later this month, eager to learn.  We all have both a moral and very practical interest in helping them succeed. As a nation, we believe that providing the opportunity for every child to receive an empowering public education is essential to our future prosperity.  As a group, however, economically […]

This is a call for all eligible Black folks to register and vote in every election from now until eternity, so we can stop the rallies, marches, and demonstrations related to voting. Despite being the most party-loyal voters in history, and receiving the least for that loyalty (No quo for our quid), we continue to […]

Lee A. Daniels Three events occurred in the tight confines of Capitol Hill last week that underscore the Republican Party’s extraordinary institutional decline and its responsibility for the Congress’ fully deserving its “do-nothing” label. First, early in the week, all but seven Republicans in the GOP – controlled House of Representatives voted to give Speaker of the House John Boehner of Ohio the […]

Julianne Malveaux What if we did not incarcerate people who commit non-violent crimes? Or, if we sentenced them, what if their sentences were reasonable, instead of intolerable? What if a man who steals a $159 jacket while high gets drug treatment and a sentence of, say, two years, instead of a sentence of life imprisonment […]

Last week I was in Jacksonville, Fla. on the Marissa Alexander case. She’s the Black woman who received a sentence of 20 years for avoiding shooting her abusive husband by firing into the ceiling to back him off from beating her up again. He’d already done so, causing her to have premature delivery of her […]

Walter Fields It was one of the most difficult scenes in Spike Lee’s classic movie “Do the Right Thing,” the brutal strangulation of peace-loving Radio Raheem by New York City police in a Brooklyn pizza shop. That scene touched a raw nerve as it recalled the 1983 death of 25-year-old graffiti artist Michael Stewart, another […]

U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings For Americans, and especially Americans of Color, this year’s elections are not an abstract debate. They are a struggle upon which our livelihoods and lives may well depend. During the last four years, we have seen a Tea Party Minority in the U.S. House and Senate do everything within its power […]

Donald L. Hense As technology increasingly changes our world, traditional ideas of how to prepare students to successfully graduate college and access a lifetime of rewarding careers also change. Part of what it takes to be successful in the 21st century – which some of today’s students will see through to its end – is […]

Phillip Jackson The White House’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative is destroying the Black Male Mentoring Movement in America – decades-long work to save Black boys. Virtually all of the small, community-based agencies that comprise this substantial, historic effort to mentor Black boys have been left out of the overall conversation, the planning, and the funding […]

July 7th was the first time I attended a protest, and I was shocked by what I saw. I am a conservative married to a Mexican woman, and have children of half-Mexican descent. I know the value of speaking Spanish. My wife and I made it a priority for our children to learn the language. […]

It’s almost impossible to turn on the TV or open a newspaper (or website) without hearing about testosterone deficiency in men. We’re barraged with information that ranges from scientifically correct concerns about a very real medical condition, to completely unsubstantiated claims about “miracle” supplements that promise to do everything from improving a man’s mood and […]

Dr. Jim Yong Kim as the first minority president of the World Bank The World Bank has no equivalent in the United States as far as institutionalized discrimination goes. To hear firsthand the harrowing discrimination that Black employees endure in the World Bank is to be transported back in time to the 1950s.  At the […]