Category: OPINION

Until its June 25 decision in the Shelby County v. Holder voting rights case, the Supreme Court had respected the express constitutional authority granted to the Congress by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. It had been clear that voting rights legislation would be upheld against facial attacks as long as the congressional legislation was rationally […]

At 5:00 a.m., careful not to wake her daughter and two sleeping grandsons, Helen gets dressed for the morning shift at a D.C. hotel kitchen. “My supervisor is a kid. I hate it, but this job is all that’s keeping us from moving back to the shelter,” Helen told me, adding that, if they get […]

“Stop that! I’m not going to tell you again.” I am sure many of you have heard your parents say those words more than once. Why? Because you always repeated what they told you not to do, right? Now that we are adults ourselves, some of us who are consciously aware of the state of […]

In the months leading up to this week’s Supreme Court decision on affirmative action, a public opinion poll by ABC News and the Washington Post showed that 76 percent of Americans oppose affirmative action in college admissions. However, a poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute showed that 68 percent of Americans favor the […]

My political consciousness was forged on an anvil not made of iron or steel, but books and music. My parents supplied me with the good stuff that prevented me from achieving bliss because ignorance was never an option. Let’s talk records. In 1988, during the golden age of hip-hop, I was given a copy of […]

In January, the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Regional Office was the slowest processing center in the nation with more than 20,000 pending claims. In January, the average wait for claims to be processed in Baltimore was averaging almost one year. I was outraged and personally offended that our veterans were being treated with disrespect by not […]

We’re Black and African-Americans. We’re Negroes. We are not, and have never been the “n” word. We are not better than any other race, nor is there any race better than us. It was that kind of deluded thinking that gave birth to the “n” word. One race created the belief that they were superior […]

The recently released University System of Maryland report on Coppin State University has generated mixed reaction among Coppin supporters and other observers of Historically Black Colleges across the country. The most generous of individuals reacting to the report give the University System of Maryland and the state of Maryland the benefit of the doubt as […]

When President Obama and the first lady travel to Africa at the end of this month, they will receive a rapturous greeting. The president’s deep roots in Kenya, the land of his father, resonate throughout the continent. His success in the United States evokes pride and joy in Africa. I write this from Nigeria, a […]

“The enduring hope is that race should not matter; the reality is that too often it does.” –        Anthony Kennedy, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Soon, in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the U.S. Supreme Court may issue a ruling that could seriously limit or altogether eliminate the use of affirmative action […]