Category: Editorial

Del. Charniele Herring has traveled around this country, but the first African American woman to chair the Democratic Party of Virginia says, “I just love Virginia; it’s been very good to me,” Ironic words coming from this great-great-granddaughter of a Lynchburg slave who today leads the state’s political party that once upheld segregation in the […]

A Philadelphia prosecutor called it a “house of horrors.” But it was no amusement day at Hershey Park for the unsuspecting women who entered the Women’s Medical Society in West Philly for more than 15 years. In fact, one Black conservative group called the frightening atrocities and crimes that occurred against vulnerable poor women, “Black […]

Post-racial politics? The issue of race in 2014, particularly in the local Democratic primaries, is already a determining factor. The rapidly changing demographics in the DMV—D.C., Maryland and Virginia—are not only redrawing the landscape but also restrucuturing the political playing fields. And all are reading those color-coded 2012 election results like tea leaves. Take a […]

Democrat Anita Bonds, who beat back five challengers and a biased media campaign to win her at-large seat on the D.C. Council in April 23 special election, attributed her win to “people who know me” all across the city. Those last-minute robocalls by her council colleagues, especially Ward 8 Council Member Marion Barry, Ward 5 […]

Anytime anyone attempts to discuss or defuse misunderstandings about intractable racism in America, which is still unable to reconcile its historic and hidden affects even today, they better be prepared for some backlash. To mention racism is to tiptoe into a minefield, and all too often it is the present practice to blame the victim […]

What prompted former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin to tweet “unflippingbelieveable,” about MSNBC’s host Melissa Harris-Perry? Gun control, gay marriage, or immigration? No, it’s public education. Nothing triggers our passions or hits us as close to home as what does or does not happen inside the schoolhouse doors where our children and grandchildren spend most […]

Will “This Girl is on Fire,” be the rallying cry for African American women candidates in the upcoming campaign season? It’s already been adopted by one Democratic candidate, D.C. Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser, who wants to broaden the thin ranks of female African American mayors in the country. Currently, only Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Baltimore Democrat, […]

As anticipated, we watched the famed Dr. Ben Carson, Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon, attempt to transform his “Gifted Hands” magic into a hocus-pocus parlor trick at the recent Conservative Action Political Committee (CPAC) meeting at National Harbor. “Let’s say you magically put me in the White House,” said the charming doctor, curiously waving his fingers in […]

A major television network anoints him “The New Conservative Folk Hero.” A Wall Street Journal editorial and a T-shirt available online hail “Ben Carson for President.” Well, maybe not for president, but some in Maryland Republican circles are dreaming of a gubernatorial candidacy for Dr. Ben Carson, the preeminent Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon. He is, after […]

It took Harry Belafonte, the esteemed elder statesman, to raise the prickly questions during the celebratory atmosphere of the NAACP Image Awards last month. As the great debate rages about gun ownership and control and white Americans rail and rally in huge numbers against any stricter laws being proposed nationally and locally, the accomplished actor […]

The fundamental question today is how do you teach children, and even some adults, the value of life, theirs and others? Maybe we wouldn’t have to endure pedantic and polarizing debates about who should get a gun, when and why, if we lived in a society in which civility, decency and sanctity of life were […]

If you relied on Hollywood’s revisionist historical docudramas, you’d think that White men fought to the death to win freedom for America’s Black slaves while they sat passively and sang spirituals until liberty was granted at the benevolent hands of White folks. Not the case at all. Abraham Lincoln, for example, the Great Emancipator? Not […]