Category: OPINION

NEW ORLEANS—{The New York Times Magazine} recently ran a story on my home, the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, a place one of the most powerful newspapers in the world insensitively dubbed a “Jungleland.” Contrary to the article, residents of this community are not reconciled to life in the wilderness and we don’t live […]

For several years now, I have been assuring everyone I know that Americans will dig our way out of the Bush Recession. The question remains, however, whether we all will be living in our own homes. The answer for many, I fear, lies as much in ideology as it does in economics. We have seen […]

Imagine standing on the side of a river, watching a man drown. He’s not very far from shore, and he’s pleading with you to help. There’s a rope lying on the ground next to you. What do you do? The answer is simple – you throw the man a line. Unfortunately for the African apparel […]

The growth in hate groups and the use of their divisive and negative language in the mainstream political and media arena is cause for national alarm. Already this year several horrendous hate crimes, possible hate crimes, and crimes committed by people with ties to hate groups have received national attention. In the first week of […]

This month marks the 44th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. As we commemorate the life of Dr. King, I am reminded that for people in the education reform movement, the struggle to obtain equal access to a high-quality public education for all of our children is the civil rights issue of our […]

When Rick Santorum suspended his bid for the GOP Presidential nomination earlier this month what seemed inevitable finally came to pass; Mitt Romney became the presumptive GOP nominee. Yet, with virtually no viable challengers left in the race Romney’s road to the Republican convention in Tampa, Florida seems to only get bumpier. The GOP’s conservative […]

Why does the concept of putting our dollars together for one collective purpose, say, business development, seem so foreign to us? Yes, we do a great of talking about it but seldom see the results of having done so when it comes to purchasing foreclosed homes, vacant lots, and businesses in our neighborhoods. We complain […]

“The landscape of any Tennessee Williams play is the human heart, and I have a cast of people with heart.” ~Emily Mann, director of the new Broadway revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire” with an all-Black cast Like Hollywood, Broadway has historically been reluctant to cast African Americans in mainstream classics, especially those originally created […]

If one were to look up “tenacity” in a dictionary, one might well simply search for logo of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, or a photograph of the MLK Memorial Foundation’s Executive Director Harry Johnson Sr. In 1984, the men of Alpha Phi Alpha proposed a national memorial to Dr. King, and they continued to push […]

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – African-Americans are more than twice as likely as non-Blacks to believe that if 17-year-old Trayvon Martin had been White, his killer would have been arrested rather than set free, according to a new USAToday/Gallup Poll. Martin was killed by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain, as he was walking back to a […]

In an age when freedom is fast becoming the exception rather than the rule, imprisoning Americans in private prisons run by mega-corporations has turned into a cash cow for big business. At one time, the American penal system operated under the idea that dangerous criminals needed to be put under lock and key in order […]