Category: Commentary

OK, let’s see: The White House. Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack. The media in general. Andrew Breitbart. Benjamin Jealous. The NAACP. Fox News. All of these players are standing around the kitchen, hit by the mess surrounding Shirley Sherrod. Shirley is fine, but everyone else has been splattered, like when the lid is left off the […]

Americans want to work. We also believe that we should care for our neighbors who are out of work through no fault of their own. These core insights about our nature as a great people are true throughout America – and especially in our communities of color. This, I believe, is why so many Americans […]

“It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in regard to that unfortunate race which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted; but the public history of […]

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch has a proposal for the unemployed. He wants them drug tested before they can receive unemployment benefits. Hilarious! With unemployment rates at 9,7 percent, with nearly six million Americans out of work for at least six months, with more than a million people without support since their unemployment benefits have run […]

(NNPA) — It was 1963. The nation was at a virtual boiling point. Despite marked gains in the civil rights struggle from integrating lunch counters and universities to equalizing buses, the fight for justice was far from over. As fire hoses and police dogs continued to be unleashed on those seeking basic human rights, and […]

I was honored when Speaker Nancy Pelosi named me as a House negotiator in our marathon effort to seek the Senate’s agreement on how best to make Wall Street and the big financial institutions more accountable. I also knew that achieving true reform would be a difficult fight. It took us days of negotiation – […]

July 4 marked 234 years of U.S. independence. And although America’s ongoing “melting pot experiment” is theoretically unbiased to Blacks, Latinos and Muslims, the Southern Poverty Law Center reports that hate groups, like the well-armed Hutaree militia, have increased 200 percent since President Obama’s 2008 election. Texas, the former rebel republic and current headquarters of […]

Although the NAACP and Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network have enthusiastically endorsed Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, two key legal groups have so far refrained from endorsing the former Harvard law dean amid questions about whether she would be a strong civil rights advocate on the court. That split underscores the complexities of a […]

NEW YORK – When a young Egyptian died from what his family, activists and witnesses say was a savage police beating, many of his peers – the generation of Egyptians who have known no other leader than President Hosni Mubarak – protested and mourned in the way they know best: by going online. Generation Mubarak […]

As chairman of the House Coast Guard Subcommittee, I have been deeply involved in determining how and why the Gulf oil spill occurred and – equally important – what we must now do to assure that such a disaster never happens again. Recently, I returned to the Gulf for a second on-site congressional briefing. We […]

The nomination of Elena Kagan, the 50-year-old solicitor general, deserves a much closer look when her Senate confirmation hearings begin June 28. Americans, particularly African Americans, cannot allow our judgment of her slim record be clouded by a knee-jerk desire to see historic President Barack Obama do well. Kagan’s record includes questionable hiring practices while […]