Category: OPINION

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 […]

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 22, 2014 — The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (Lawyers’ Committee) issued the statement below following Friday’s U.S. Sentencing Commission Vote: The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (Lawyers’ Committee) commends the July 18th unanimous vote by the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC or Commission) to apply a reduction in […]

U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson We are in the midst of a humanitarian crisis that has left more than 52,000 children, many without their parents, in limbo at America’s borders. Texas, along with other southwestern border states, has experienced an influx of undocumented immigrants. It is during these times that we all must exercise thoughtfulness […]

U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings On July 2nd, our nation celebrated the 50th anniversary of a major achievement in the ongoing fight for social justice. On that day in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, legislation that permanently changed the trajectory of millions of destinies for people of color, […]