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 […]
Category: OPINION
Posted inCommentary
“Listen In”
You’re sitting on the bus, near the back, with only a couple of other passengers on board, all out of earshot. You get a call from a family member who is having problems. They want your advice. Or a call from your doctor’s office, and you need to speak with them right away. You should […]
Posted inEditorial
Tough Love is Not Enough
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 […]
Posted inCommentary
Achieving ‘Balance’ in the Federal Budget
It now appears that, beginning March 1, Republican resistance to the President’s strategy for getting our economic house in order could well take our economy on a painful toboggan ride. We can avoid this dangerous slide – but only if the will of the American people makes itself felt on Capitol Hill. On March 1, […]
Posted inCommentary
“Bayard Rustin: An Unsung Hero for Equality”
A decade before Rosa Parks’ arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus, police dragged Bayard Rustin off a bus in Tennessee for the same act of protest. When pressed about why he was resisting segregation, Rustin gestured to a young White boy seated at the front of the bus. […]
Posted inCommentary
The Wisdom of Dr. Ben Carson
Dr. Ben Carson, Presidential Medal of Freedom winner and legendary neurosurgeon, is now in the spotlight for his keynote address to the National Prayer Breakfast on Feb. 7. It’s not brain surgery to figure out why. Most notable was his criticism of Obamacare, one of the worst federal laws in decades, and one which, before […]
Posted inEditorial
Bungling the Telling of Black History
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 […]
Posted inCommentary
When Politics and Ethics Collide
On Friday, February 15, 2013, the Baltimore City Democratic State Central Committee -45th District (BCDCC) convened at the Oliver Community Center to select a candidate to assume the seat held Del. Hattie Harrison, a longtime political stalwart in East Baltimore, who died Jan. 28. Ten candidates interviewed for the position, including three who are members […]
Posted inCommentary
Rev. Vernon Dobson: A Prophet for Our Time
America, in the years immediately following World War II, began to emerge into an era of rapidly expanding economic growth and social opportunity. All across the nation, veterans and their families were moving into new suburban communities and seizing the promise of a new American prosperity. But, for the Negro veteran, America seemed determined to […]
Posted inCommentary
The State of Equality and Justice in America: ‘Let Us Not Lose Focus on the Justice Issues That Still Loom’
This year, we are celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington. As African Americans, we are pleased that this country has progressed from the forced enslavement of our race to the removal of the Jim Crow laws and practices. We are also celebrating the reelection […]
Posted inCommentary
Obama Challenges Congress to Complete ‘Unfinished Task’
WASHINGTON (NNPA) – After laying out a progressive agenda for his second term in his inaugural address, President Obama followed up Tuesday night with a series of specific proposals in his State of the Union address that include increasing and indexing the minimum wage, repairing deteriorated infrastructure, and investing in education and clean energy. “It […]
Posted inCommentary
Strom Thurmond and Essie Mae
People die, but the truth lives and breathes freely on its own. We now mourn the passing of 87-year old Essie Mae Washington-Williams, who, in December 2003, confirmed one of the oldest rumors of Southern political folklore: that she was the mixed-race daughter of former US Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC). Washington-Williams, whose mother worked as […]
