Continuing struggle for equal opportunity and social justice among Americans of African descent.

HEADLINES

3/9/10

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: THE NEW JIM CROW, MASS INCARCERATION IN AN AGE OF COLORBLINDNESS. The title of this new book tells the story, a story of willful public refusal to recognize the overwhelming frequency of people of "color" in prisons and the connection of this fact to the escalated "war on drugs." While defenders of the policy point to an alleged increase in drug-related crimes in areas of heavy minority population, the facts belie the belief as this "war" involves an "enemy" of decreasing strength even as the effort to combat it is increased.

INTERNATIONAL

Websites:

Analysis & views:

2/24/08

Effort to "move beyond race" in South Africa reflected in popularity of an ethnically-mixed band called Freshlyground.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0222/p04s01-woaf.html  

5/6/07

Furor erupts in Quebec over a film which depicts Kunta Kinta, legendary family progenitor in Alex Haley's Roots, as a cannibal.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=de68ad6d-c70f-4131-af4c-a77280055cc6  

12/9/06

Racial profiling of blacks by police in Montreal is on the rise, according to a mult-cultural agency report.

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=94f586bc-41f2-4aa2-848e-ec48e4377976&k=20734

Books:

Video/Film:

Other Media:

NATIONAL

Websites:

Black Network:

http://www.black-network.com/  

Rainbow Push Coalition:

http://www.rainbowpush.org/FMPro?-db=RPOfrontpage.fp5&-format=rainbowpush/frontpage/results.htm&-lay=front&constant=1&-find

African American Websites: 

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~savega/afr_amer.htm    http://www.myblackinfo.com/african_american_websites.html

Urban Institute: Racial Segregation in Housing   (abstracts of published articles and papers):

http://www.urban.org/housing/race.cfm  

Analysis & views:

3/11/10

THERE IS PRECIOUS LITTLE COMITY IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY ON THE WORTHINESS OF THE MOVIE "PRECIOUS." As the movie wins acting and screenwriting awards at the Oscar ceremonies, activists like Ishmael Reed continue to deride the negative message about blacks that they see the movie as providing. Reed and other critics are portrayed in media outlets like Entertainment Weekly as being "contrarians" and perhaps mentally unstable. Meantime Reed makes the allegation, so far unanswered, that the producer of the movie, Tyler Perry, essentially bought those awards by a million dollar contribution to the NAACP, which gave numerous of its own awards to the film, helping to give it the cover of black approval that may have eased the way toward the Oscar awards

3/9/10

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: THE NEW JIM CROW, MASS INCARCERATION IN AN AGE OF COLORBLINDNESS. The title of this new book tells the story, a story of willful public refusal to recognize the overwhelming frequency of people of "color" in prisons and the connection of this fact to the escalated "war on drugs." While defenders of the policy point to an alleged increase in drug-related crimes in areas of heavy minority population, the facts belie the belief as this "war" involves an "enemy" of decreasing strength even as the effort to combat it is increased.

3/4/10

IS A POOR BLACK COUNTY IN GEORGIA ABOUT TO GET A BIG DOSE OF ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM? Bruce Dixon says that is the case, citing the intention of building the first new U.S. nuclear plant in many years in Burke County, adjacent to the existing one outside Savannah that is already polluting large tracts of land and water in the area. Residents have long complained of many ailments related to the operation of the existing plant, and a new misery may simply be piled on top of the old one for a vulnerable population.

2/20/10

Racial tensions running high at University of California San Diego after a student-based TV station runs a mock-out on invitations to a "ghetto party."

2/18/10

THE SHORT AND UNHAPPY LIVES OF STABLE COMMUNITIES IN URBAN BLACK AMERICA. Bruce Dixon interviews anthropologist Susan Greenbaum of University of South Florida on the impact of the Hope 6 housing project begun in the Bush I and continued through 3 other presidential administrations: a program of what Dixon calls gentrification, displacement and dispersion of black urban America. Under the banner of housing stock "improvement," public housing was essentially destroyed to make way for private housing projects that were unaffordable to the poor black families of these neighborhoods, insuring that few urban black neighborhoods could maintain that identity for more than a generation or two.

2/6/10

Anti-abortion group targets black women, putting up billboards claiming that abortion is a scheme to promote the extinction of blacks as an "endangered species."

2/5/10

ISHMAEL REED SEES "PRECIOUS" AS AN ATTEMPT TO "CAST COLLECTIVE SHAME UPON AN ENTIRE COMMUNITY." The writer notes that the Academy Award nominated film, the story of an obese illiterate teenage black girl who has twice been impregatned by her father, has been received along racially polarized lines. Whites and some black sponsors like Orpah Winfrey tend to love it as an inspiring story of an underprivileged girl overcoming adversity (with the help of mostly white teachers and social workers) while blacks tend to take it as a slur on the black community, falsely suggesting that another aspect of the "dysfunctional family" among blacks is the prevalence of incest. Reed tells blacks that, while the film is about blacks, it is not really "meant for them."

2/1/10

Anniversary being observed of lunch-counter sit-in that ignited civil rights movement 50 years ago.

1/22/10

BLACK AMERICANS' PERCEPTIONS OF THE CONDITION OF BLACKS IN AMERICA; YOU ARE ABOUT TO ENTER THE DELUSION ZONE. That is Glen Ford's description of the reality/perception disconnect between recent opinion polls showing a sharp rise in blacks saying their people are "better off" today, contrasted with firm economic data showing that they are falling drastically further behind in such areas as employment and home ownership. Ford diagnoses this delusion as a product of a "chemically-induced imbalance in the brain" called the Obama Delusion, an opiate that allows blacks to endure a miserable earthly existence under an hallucinogenic rhapsody of joy that one of "their own" is in the White House.

1/14/10

THERE'S A NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN AND AMERICAN BLACKS DON'T NEED AN ANNUAL "STATE OF THE BLACK UNION" MEDIA EVENT. This is the essence, as Bruce Dixon describes it, of black TV personality Tavis Smiley's announcement that, after 10 straight years, SOBU will not be held this year. Smiley's "logic": with a black President in office, blacks don't have to wait for an annual event to have their views aired on national TV. Dixon argues, in contrast, that the shutting down of SOBU simply further illustrates the "media lockdown" on black dissent that the corporations, the Democratic Party and Obama administration have clamped on any expression of leftist political expression by American blacks.

1/7/10

BLACK POLITICS IS OVER: BRUCE A. DIXON TAKES ANOTHER SWIPE AT THE BLACK MISLEADERSHIP CLASS. The Georgia resident notes, as in another essay 4 years ago, that black political leaders in America have abandoned the pursuit of MLK's dream of racial justice and peace in favor of pursuing their own careers in a society dominated by white corporate powers. The President and the Black Congressional Caucus draw some of Dixon's fire, but he reserves his hottest words for the new black Mayor of Atlanta, who is continuing a string of black mayors since j1972, most of whom have encouraged the gentrification and retreat from public services of the city, leaving blacks in as disadvantaged a situation as they were before this advent of black "leaders."

1/7/10

NOW ISN'T THAT PRECIOUS? Recent popular film of that title, which features a black teenager giving birth to a second child by rape from her father, sends black pro-choice activist Sikivu Hutchinson into a lamentation on the prejudice against women's choices to have abortions, a prejudice found in both the fundamentalism of the white religious right and the "morality police" prominent among black leaders. Most acutely today, this has been reflected in the willingness of black members of Congress and presumbly a black President to accept a rider in health care coverage that signficantly restricts coverage for abortion, a measure that will create further disadvantage for black Americans who are already suffering the effects of large numbers of unplanned children.

12/14/09

Proposed changes in admission policy for Chicago's magnet schools may dilute their power to effect reductions in racial segregation in schools.

12/10/09

THE NOVACAINE OF DULLED SUFFERING OF BLACK AMERICANS INJECTED IN THEM BY AN OBAMA PRESIDENCY IS BEGINNING TO WEAR OFF. So says South Carolina organizer Kevin Alexander Gray, noting the fragile condition of a people narcotized into ignoring the suffering of racial discrimination in America in the name of "black solidarity" to support one of "their own" in the White House. As the anesthetizing power of the "novacaine" wears off, Gray believes blacks will again return to the civil rights-type solidarity against that discrimination, at which point if Obama isn't part of the solution he will be deemed as a big part of the problem.

11/30/09

WITH THE MOVIE PRECIOUS, BLACK MOTHERHOOD TAKES ANOTHER HARD HIT IN PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS. The travails of an obese teenager, twice pregnant from a racist father and with a brutal, pimpster mother, resurrects a theme in public comment on the "dysfunction" of many black families. While Barack Obama has spoken harshly of and to black fathers, Precious reminds us of an earlier tradition, exemplified in the Moynihan Report of the 1960s, that attributes black failures largely to the inadequacies of their mothers. As black motherhood is being so hit by Precious and real life cases of notorious black mothers, Sarah Palin's problems in white motherhood are being rehabilitated as a characterization of sterling performance of white mothers.

11/19/09

BLACK MASS INCARCERATION: GREEN PARTY OF GEORGIA AIMS TO LAY THE ISSUE ON THE TABLE OF PUBLIC ACTION. As a bipartisan consensus among Democrats and Republicans continues in a state of denial about the heavy disproportion of blacks in U.S. prisons (1/6 of the population furnishing 1/2 of inmates), the Green Party aims to put that issue squarely on the table during upcoming elections. Bruce Dixon, editor of Black Agenda Report, is now press secretary for GP Georgia, and describes plans in that state to run candidates on that issue in some of the many predominantly black areas of the state.

10/23/09

HAS THE ELECTION OF A SERIES OR BLACK MAYORS AND THE EMPOWERMENT OF A BLACK MILLIONAIRE CLASS IN ATLANTA LIFTED THE BOAT OF ALL BLACK ATLANTANS? To the contrary, says Atlanta area resident Bruce Dixon, that "boat" has sunk steadily during this period of black elite domination, as Atlanta today has some of the highest black poverty rates (around 35%) in the country as movement of black elites into the "boardrooms" of the city has been accompanied by more blacks who simply don't have a roof over their heads. Dixon attributes the decline of a populist civil rights movement among blacks, encouraged by black elites, for this sinking of the boat.

10/12/09

WILL RUSH LIMBAUGH BUY THE ST. LOUIS RAMS IN ASSOCIATION WITH GOLDMAN SACHS? Dave Zirin notes the surprising report of an impending "scuzzy" deal by which the NFL team may be purchased. Zirin reviews long history of racism to question whether the League should approve such ownership in a league 70% of whose players are black; not to mention the bailout champion firm that maintains a cozy relationship with the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

9/19/09

HOW THE U.S. CENSUS HELPS SUPPRESS BLACK POLITICAL POWER Glen Ford describes the political consequence of the way the census bureau lists as "place of residence" those people who are incarcerated in prisons, listing this "place" as the community in which they are imprisoned, not that from which they came. This has serious repercussions for the allocation of public funds and the drawing of electoral districts, both of which are based on population. This is illustrated in New York state, where NYC furnishes 66% of state prisoners (mostly black), 94% of whom have their "residences" in downstate prisons, helping to perpetuate a Republican-dominated legislature that overwhelms the predominance of Democrats in NYC.

9/14/09

BEN BERNANKE TELLS WORLD BANKS THAT U.S. IS ON TRACK TO A "NORMAL" ECONOMY. Unfortunately, says Seth Wessler, the "normal" economy of the last 30 years has been based on racial discrimination, especially in the housing market. Financial de-regulation opened the gates to a flood of subprime lending targeting people of color especially, and the housing bust (and the unemployment spike) has been concentrated in this demographic. The almost-total failure of Obama's "foreclosure prevention" program (with banks re-negotiating mortgages for only 6% of eligible borrowers) indicates that the "track to the normal" on which the U.S. is travelling is a track to perpetuated racial inequality which in turn feeds perpetual recession.

9/13/09

AMERICAN RACIAL MINORITIES EXPERIENCING "THE WORST OF ALL WORLDS: THE PAIN OF A FULL-SCALE RACIST BACKLASH WITHOUT THE BENEFITS OF POLICIES THAT ALLEVIATE DAILY HARDSHIPS." This is the life of minorities in the age of Obama, says Naomi Klein, noting that the current ferocious right wing anger against Obama is reminiscent of the white backlash in "massive resistance" efforts in the civil rights era. Unlike the earlier era, the "resistance" is against an administration that has been notably "silent" on racial discrimination and which fails to advocate "policies that alleviate daily hardship," She concludes, in effect, that with his tepid moves toward "socialism" so roundly denounced, politically he might as well try to become the champion of "alleviating daily hardships" for minority Americans.

9/6/09

AFTER 4 YEARS, WHEELS OF JUSTICE IN NEW ORLEANS FOR DEALING WITH WHITE VIGILANTISM HAVE RUSTED. Nation investigative report focuses on aftermath of episodes after Katrina in which at least 11 black people were shot by white vigilantes in their zeal to contain "disorder" after the flood. Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke video popularized these allegations. The new report quotes one of the vigilante victims as claiming that the police have not even interviewed him until now

9/1/09

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION MUST BE DOING SOMETHING RIGHT (LEFT). Six months after taking office as Attorney General, Eric Holder announces plans for sweeping reform in the way the Justice Department does business, as it expects to ramp up the staff of the Civil Rights Division and engage in some "high profile" actions against discrimination, not only individual but also institutional. Bitter complaint by conservatives indicates there may be more than rhetoric involved in this delayed but promised civil rights activism

8/29/09

FBI is upbraided for failing to investigate one of its own undercover agents, Hal Turner, for his 2006 call for the "lynching" of Cynthia McKinney.

8/27/09

Racist e-mails lead to $1.8 million damage award to three plaintiffs charging racial discrimination by employees of city of Kenesaw, Georgia.

8/3/09

Police at University of Vermont trying to counter racial profiling allegations of themselves by recording the race of those whom they stop on traffic infractions.

8/2/09

FROM THREE GUYS SHARING A BEER TO "PARTICIPATORY DIALOGUE": IS THIS THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE OF U.S. RACE RELATIONS? President Obama's White House sit-down with Professor Gates and Office Crowley (with Joe Biden sitting in for "racial balance"?) could, thinks sociologist Yosset Ben-Meir, become the model for what needs to be done at the local level throughout the country. Ben-Meir envisions Education Department funded racial dialogue sessions. (Maybe Arne Duncan will even spend some of his "stimulus" millions to stimulate his dialogue?) HOPE!

8/1/09

NAACP IN NEW YORK CITY: THEY GOT "HEAL THYSELF" PABLUM FROM OBAMA, BLINDERS TO WALK THE STREETS OF THE CITY. Margaret Kimberley so describes the dominant message of the President and the situation in the city itself, in which unemployment among blacks is 4 times the rate as among whites, and blacks lose their homes to foreclosure at a much higher rate. If you just keep your eyes focused on the Statue of Liberty, you won't see this misery at your feet.

7/14/09

NAACP, on 100th anniversary of founding, unveils plan to develop high technology program by means of which people can report by cell phone their witnessing of acts of racial hate.

7/13/09

Joblessness in New York City increases at a much higher rate for blacks than for whites.

7/13/09

Suburban Philadelphia swim club rescinds its exclusion of children from ssday care centers made up mostly of minority children.

6/4/09

Dignity begins with Cynthia McKinney at a black church in Harlem:.  The Green Party candidate for President speaks out at a forum in New York in announcing the formation of a "network" of people called DIGNITY, hoping to recapture control of our government from policies that have shown profound disrespect for African-Americans and for the rank and file of Americans generally.  She invites people of all races to become involved.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=print/content/cynthia-mckinney-announces-formation-dignity

5/24/09

Working at the intersection of art and justice.  A collective of black film-makers in New Orleans called 2 Cents Entertainment is engaged in an ambitious enterprise of filming the devastation and neglect that is the heart of the New Orleans "story" in Katrina's aftermath.  In a piece of irony their efforts, including a film called New Orleans For Sale, demonstrate the reality that money can be made from a kind of "disaster tourism" by which, for example, a tourist can take a bus ride through the devastation for $75: "If y’all keep paying your money to see it, should we rebuild it?”

http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/05/media-as-a-weapon-new-orleans%e2%80%99-2-cent/

5/18/09

RISING TIDE OF STIMULUS FUNDING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION IS NOT RAISING THE BOAT OF HISTORICALLY BLACK COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES, WHICH MAY BE IN DANGER OF SINKING;  Ironically, notes Glen Ford, the "first black President" of the U.S. may be presiding over the demise of these key contributors to the education of African Americans.  While mostly-white institutions enjoy generous stimulus fiunding, there is a severe cutback to those catering mostly to blacks (and also native Americans).  Since these colleges are largely dependent on philanthropic support, which is also down in the recessed economy, they are likely to face dire prospects of survival.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/first-black-president-cuts-funds-black-higher-education

5/16/09

The white gentrification of post-Katrina New Orleans, begun by Bush, complete by Obama:; Glen Ford describes how a "cynical" plan to use New Orleans as an "urban model" of communities with minimized minority presence has continued across the two presidential administration.  The "eviction:" of tenants from FEMA trailers helps to accomplish the "plan," as these tenants have been promised and then denied the opportunity to buy their "temporary" homes.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/obama-shows-his-true-katrina-colors

5/16/09

"Cyclone" hits Jamaica, Queens.  In this middle class section of Qeens, as around the New York metropolitan area generally, black middle class homeowners, as well as minorities generally, suffer mortgage foreclosure rates several times non-Hispanic white residents.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/16/nyregion/16foreclose.html?th&emc=th

5/2/09

GLEN FORD: VIRGINIA FUSION CENTER PUTS OUT "RACIST CRAP" AND HOMELAND SECURITY PAYS FOR IT. This  shadowy "intelligence" agency of the Virginia police issues report saying that there is a special danger of terrorism emanating from the black and "historically black" colleges in the state.  Their reasoning is that these colleges encourage "diversity" of student bodies from around the world, making it easier for "terrorists" to blend into the fabric of American life: as if only non-white people are terrorist-susceptible.  Ford calls the allegation laughable, given the political apathy of most students on these campuses; and the editor of the Sun State Activist, who formerly taught at one of these colleges, Virginia State in Norfolk, can second that observation.  Nevertheless, similar boondoogle agencies of "intelligence" are being funded around the country to furnish such such "intelligence."

http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/black-colleges-profiled-suspected-havens-%E2%80%9Cextremists%E2%80%9D

4/17/09

WILL OBAMA'S BOYCOTT OF WORLD RACISM CONFERENCE BE A "DEAL-BREAKER" FOR BLACK AMERICANS' SUPPORT OF HIM?  Apparently not, says Glen Ford, noting that the decision not to attend the Durban II conference after efforts to completely water down its provisions is all of a piece with the broader pattern of "disrespect" that the black community has suffered at the hands of the "first black" President.  Huffington Post's report on the boycott decision notes that it followed a conference call with "Jewish leaders" in which Obama gave assurances of continued support in the face of the expectation that the conference would condemn Israeli actions in Palestine.  Ford wonders: where are the "conference calls" to black leaders?

http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/avoiding-world-conference-racism-shows-obamas-disrespect-blacks

3/19/09

A mostly-ignored front in thew war on terrorism: White Christian militants.: : WHITE CHRISTIAN MILITANTS.  Repeated episodes in which people with white supremicist and "anti-liberal" agendas---such as an assassination plot against Obama---fly under the radar of media and public attention.  Margaret Kimberley pulls together many of these separate episodes to begin to reveal a pattern of official tolerance for behavior that would be severely suppressed had it come from people with Muslim connections.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/freedom-rider-white-christian-terrorists-nuclear-materials-ignored

2/25/09

OPINION: THE FEDERAL STIMULUS PLAN CHEERED LAST NIGHT AT THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS TO CONGRESS WILL ONLY INCREASE U.S. INCOME AND RACIAL DISPARITIES.  Glen Ford notes that New Orleans, one of the U.S. cities most in need of "recovery," will get shortchanged by the plan's allocation of "job creation" funds on the basis of an area's population, which was greatly diminished by extended flight of people after Katrina, thus furnishing no basis for creating jobs for those expatriates who would like to return.  Also, the threatened refusal of Republican governors of several relatively poor and black southern states would have the same effect of depriving "economic stimulus" for populations who need it the most.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1035&Itemid=1

2/4/09

Glen Ford: American blacks have made no demands of Barack Ovbama and they are getting nothing from his current crusade to save the banksters: The executive editor of Black Agenda Report states his often-repeated belief that blacks are so enamored of Obama as a messianic figure of salvation for the race, that their impulse is to protect rather than to demand anything from him, and there is accordingly no protest from any powerful corner of the black community of his stimulus and bailout plans that will further impoverish themselves.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1013&Itemid=1

1/18/09

Is this colonial Algeria or post-industrial Oakland?  A doctoral candidate in political theory at UC Berkeley describes the old/new dynamic of popular rebellion and official repression following the shooting of a black civilian at an Oakland CA transit stop.  The process that Frantz Fanon described for the Algerian revolt of the 1950s is replicated in Oakland, as "moderate" protest leaders try to contain the rebellion, only to have the masses reject their peace-making efforts.

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/20289  

1/9/09

Decline of black union membership in U.S. is described as largely result of decline in manufacturing jobs.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=964&Itemid=1

12/28/08

Post-Katrina white vigilante violence: The Nation exposes, NOPD will investigate:  After a December 17 Nation article by A.C. Thompson detailing widespread anti-black actions disguised as control of "looters," NOPD police chief announces on Christmas Eve that an investigation will be undertaken.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090112/thompson?rel=hp_currently  

12/19/08

Katrina disaster relief: A la Algiers Point:.  A.C. Thompson publishes investigative report in Nation magazine of the wave of vigilante white violence against black New Orleanians immediately after Katrina, acts for which to this day no one has been prosecuted.  Algiers Point was a "white enclave" across the Mississippi which was largely spared Katrina damage and which become a transfer point for evacuees.  Under the guise of protecting the community from "looters," white vigilante engaged in a much-praised (in the pro-gun community) project of self-reliance for their protection in the absence of effective policing.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090105/thompson

12/17/08

Black homophobia did not cause passage of Prop 8 gay marriage ban in California:  So argues Margaret Kimberley, noting that news media grossly over-estimated the percentage by which blacks voted for the proposition, and many white gays acted like whites by scapegoating blacks for a result which could not have been brought about by a mere 6% of the California population.  If you want to place blame, says Kimberley, place it on the white gays who failed to organize, especially in the black community, and blame as well the marginalization of black political thinking and its focus on "family and religion" issues as matters such as black poverty and incarceration have been taken "off the table" of the national discourse.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=934&Itemid=1  

10/23/08

Will Joe Six-Pack, Joe the Plumber and the soccer mom walk away with the '08 election?  Keenaga-Yamatta Taylor thinks not, noting that the subliminal white racism noted in the "Bradley effect" of voters secretly harboring white racist attitudes when they vote is actually a by-product of a disappearing ethos among American whites.  The growing frequency of election of blacks in white-majority areas is an indication of this. The Obama's "race neutral"  campaign has helped as well to neutralize this "effect."

http://www.counterpunch.org/taylor10222008.html  

10/3/08

Paul Street: America's whites live in vicious racial denial:.   Recent USA Today cover story on white racial attitudes reports on opinion surveys that indicate beliefs about blacks that reflect the "beyond race" perspective of the Obama presidential campaign.  Included among these "denials" are a belief that racial discrimination in the country has been effectively overcome, and that any remnants of apparent discrimination come from the failure of blacks to exercise personal "responsibility." Street notes with some acrimony his observation of expressions of such denial from privileged white college students who display their sense of entitlement because they are white and express their own "responsibility" by disdaining any obligation to pursue their studies in favor of their prevalent "partying" activity.

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/19005

9/3/08

Black American leaders having made no demands of Barack Obama, nothing is what they will recevie from an Obama presidency: ,So argues Black Agenda Report editor Glen Ford, noting that the "black consensus" demand for a Marshall-plan type reconstruction of American cities has not been presented to Obama as a condition of their support.  The "gentrification" of the country to the detriment of blacks and all other poor people proceeds apace, and Obama will not even speak to the condition of thousands of black Americans who remain dispossessed of their homes in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina while the gentrification of New Orleans goes on

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?

8/27/08

Katrina "was (and remains) the greatest test of black leadership since the days of generalized white etrror in the South.":That "leadership" miserably failed that "test," says Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report, noting that the Black Congressional Caucus caved in to Nancy Pelosi's pressure to have Democratic party to "distance" itself from black identification by refusing to put the political ramifications of the "disaster capitalism" that devastated black New Orleans on the "table" of Congress.  Nor does the impending election of Barack Obama promise a better "test performance" as he is beholden to the same corporate interests that have benefitted by the continuing "gentrification" of New Orleans.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=755&Itemid=1

8/10/08

The hip hop artists and American politics:.  A former Baltimore school teacher, calling himself Son of Nun, is interviewed by Slept On Magazine and articulates, in hip hop street language, his broad commitment to a progressive movement across a broad range of issues, of which the exposure of racism is only one. The interviewer alludes to without emphasizing the fact that S.O.N has "shared the stage" with such other  white and black activists as Cindy Sheehan, Howard Zinn and Rosa Clemente, the latter of whom is the current Green Party's Vice-Presidential nominee.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/08/meet-son-of-nun/

8/9/08

For poor urban blacks, are section 8 vouchers a trip over the "River Jordan" or a bridge to nowhere but more misery?:   New York Times article focuses on suburb of Antioch, California, into which many blacks have moved in recent years by virtue of the federal housing assistance program that provides rent vouchers to encourage such moves.  The "promised land" for many turns out to be a land in which they are subjected both to police surveillance and harassment and a vulnerability to losing homes whose owners are affected by recent mortgage meltdown.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/us/09housing.html?th&emc=th

8/7/08

"Barack Obama's America is a place where nobody calls racism by its name."  Black Agenda editor Glen Ford argues that Obama persistently fails to address the "specific concerns" of black Americans, focussing on an incident in St. Petersburg Florida.  At an Obama "pep rally" preceeding Obama's appearance at a convention of the National Urban League in Orlando, the candidate was confronted by a representative of the black nationalist movement, Uhuru, who asked him to address just such concerns.  Ford's article includes a link to a YouTube capturing the entire exchange, including Obama's stammering attempt to respond, making claims about his positions on these issues that Ford believes play loosely with the truth. An interesting thread of comments follows the article.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=735&Itemid=1 

7/30/08

FDR's "New Deal," you say? LBJ's "Great Society"?:  For black Americans, it's the era of "blame the victim". Black Agenda writer views the CNN Special "Blacks in America," and finds it anything but "special." In fact it is tiresomely similar to the trend now headed by Barack Obama to attribute blacks' problems to the lack of "responsibility" of blacks themselves. This ignores the unfulfilled responsibility of government toward blacks as well as all its citizens to help create conditions that will facilitate citizens' use of personal responsibility to find solutions of those problems

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=718&Itemid=1

7/20/08

Let freedom ring!: Hans Bennett interviews the director of a San Francisco-based Freedom Archives, which produces films related to the black revolutionary struggle and the continued government repressive efforts against that struggle. Attached to the article is a trailer for one of their products, the film Legacy of Torture, in which men in New Orleans say they are subjected to the same tactics as those used to suppress the Black Panther Party in 1973, with Homeland Security now replacing FBI Cointelpro operations as instruments of that suppression.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/07/the-freedom-archives-an-interview-with-claude-marks/

7/16/08

At NAACP meeting, Barack Obama returns to his "theme" of blacks needing to take responsibility for their own lives: While tempering his remarks with comments to the effect that "Washington" must take on its own responsibility for helping black Americans, Obama pursues the theme of personal responsibility, which critics like Jesse Jackson says is equivalent to "talking down" to blacks.  The NAACP loudly approves his remarks.  (As they did those  of Jeremiah Wright, Obama's former pastor whom he condemned for views not those of the "majority of blacks.")

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/14/AR2008071402448.html?wpisrc=newsletter

7/13/08

Cynthia McKinney, nominated for President by Green Party, is set to challenge Obama for black vote, saying that his move to the political center has abandoned the progressive interests of black Americans.

http://www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com/node/39

7/10/08

Is Justice Departmnet ramping up for another "American bloackout" in this November's elections?  This is the suspicion of some as local, state and federal enforcement agencies (Republican) look into cases of alleged "voter fraud" in 3 counties in Alabama that contain a large proportion of black voters.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/us/10fraud.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th   

7/5/08

Ballot initiatives being pushed in Arizona, Nebraska and Colorado to ban affirmative action in public sector hiring.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0703/p01s01-uspo.html  

7/1/08

"All I did was sign the papers." An elderly black man in Atlanta, a foreclosure victim of the subprime lending scandal, so expresses his confusion about the process by which he lost possession of his home.  Nation writer Kai Wright describes how subprime lenders, caught up in the stock market securities "bubble" which made them insatiable for cash for market investment, lured people into financing and re-financing arrangements that have led ultimately to foreclosure rates for black Americans that are twice the rate of those for whites.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080714/wrigh

6/17/08

Guess who's coming to dinner? Barack Obama, that's who:.  Paul Street joins in the drumbeat of recent articles on progressive websites (Black Agenda Report, Counter Currents, Counter Punch, Common Dreams, Z Net, Dissident Voice) which have questioned Obama's progressive credentials in one respect or another.  In Street's case, he focuses on the question whether Obama's election would be good for American race relations or the condition of black Americans and offers a negative assessment.  The problem is that the Obama campaign is appealing to the "institutional racism" of white Americans, their denial that racial discrimination exists because it is not overtly done and their belief that blacks are themselves responsible for their own condition as they "make excuses" for their problems, rather than making something of themselves as Obama and other "not too black" men like Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby have done.  In declaring the U.S. as "beyond race," Obama attracts the admiration of some of the most reactionary of commenters on the American political scene. Meantime black men languish in jails and poverty, black women in pregnancy and husband-less childrearing and black children are of course the most egregious victims of the racism that we have supposedly moved "beyond."

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17919

6/5/08

Black hip-hop doesn't throw Sean Bell under the bus:.  To the contrary, the industry has produced numerous pieces that fulfill rapper Chuck D's description of rap as "CNN for black people," framing the "message" of the acquittal of police who killed Bell as a "fuck the nigga" message.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/06/tellin-it-how-it-is/

6/4/08

Black barber in Houston settles "racial profiling" case against police for arresting him after discarding a bottle of colored water in department store refuge bin, which was incorrectly suspected to have been laced with codeine.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5817430.html  

5/29/08

Black Agenda Report article says that Barack Obama's presidential candidacy is bad news for the "self-determination" aspirations of black Americans.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=636&Itemid=1  

5/22/08

If MLK were holding bus boycotts today, black radio would not report it:.  Bruce Dixon uses this observation in his Black Agenda Report lament about the decline of black radio which he says treats black Americans as a "market" rather than a "polity."  The decline of news broadcasting, certainly not compensated by the rise of opinion-dominated talk radio, deprives the black community of a much-needed avenue for public information and dialogue on the racial situation in America.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=634&Itemid=1  

5/13/08

New legislation in Congress to control marketing cigarettes as candies and adding attractive flavoring appears to have one exemption which will allow the continued addition of menthol to cigarettes.  Critics note that menthol cigarettes are particularly favored by African Americans, that lung cancer is of near epidemic proportions in that community and this exemption represents a "cave-in" to the tobacco industry. (Shut your mouth, Jeremiah Wright!)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/business/13menthol.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1210674642-zaLCRJbqCCniosh+3xuGXQ&oref=slogin  

5/9/08

Playing the race card in U.S. politics:. Columnist for Toronto Star remarks on pervasive racism in the U.S.A. (and in Canada) and thinks it is rife in the current U.S. presidential election, with Hillary Clinton having subtly courted the white male vote with such campaign tactics as embracing guns for hunting. Jerry Rose, in the 10th Comment in the string of comments accompanying the Common Dreams reprint of this column, argues to the contrary that the "race card" in this race consists in the white power structure centered on Wall Street having manipulated black voters and white "liberals" by offering as a candidate a black man who would support their agenda while appealing to the racially-based "identity" issues of these voters.  Disagreement obviously follows.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/08/8815/  

4/30/08

Barack Obama's "race neutral" startegy unravels; and Jeremiah Wright was the instrument of that unravelling:   So says Black Agenda Report editor Glen Ford, a long-time Obama critic, in noting that Wright's "hate" remarks drew a line in the sand between the views of white and black America, and that Obama came down firmly on the "Euro-American" side of belief in the exceptional goodness of America and its Manifest Destiny to dominate the rest of the world.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=603&Itemid=1

4/8/08

On a relatively obscure website, Dissident Voice, journalist Evelyn Pringle posts an article which reviews allegations of Barack Obama's  intimate connection with a Chicago-based set of corrupt political practices centered around the diversion of state and city funds intended to promote affordable housing.  In calling for Obama to withdraw from the Presidential race ahead of possible indictments by a special prosecutor, she is echoing the situation in 1972 campaign in which George McGovern chose Tom Eagleton as his running-mate only to replace him when he learned that Eagleton had not revealed a history of mental illness when he "vetted" him with the question: "Tom, do you have any skeletons in your closet?"  Or, to cite another historical parallel, Obama (who may already have used his quota of issue-confronting speeches with the Jeremiah Wright affair) may need to do another "Checkers" speech of the sort that Richard Nixon used in 1952 to persuade Eisenhower to keep him as his running mate.  The currents of history are strong, and while this may be only a ripple, if not dealt with it can be a tsunami of destructiveness for a political campaign.  It's seems time for responsible journalism to take up the issue

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/04/barack-obama-operation-board-games-for-slumlords/

3/24/08

Cynthia McKinney steps to the plate and takes a swing at assessing "The Speech" about race in America:   The would-be Green Party nominee for President welcomes Barak Obama's eloquent acknowledgment of continuing racial disparity in America, at the same time he relegates Pastor Wright's "extremist" expression to a stylistic mode of the past.  She feels this campaign season will be redeemed in its relevance to the real problems of our time if such recognition will be the basis of a real dialogue about concrete alterations in public policy that will address these disparities.  "Hope" is great, "change" is based on action.

http://www.counterpunch.org/mckinney03192008.html

3/20/08

The devil is in the details of "The Speech" by Barack Obama:.  Obama has his "Houston moment" of a speech in which he tries to address "head on" the unspoken influence of race on the presidential campaign.  In "distancing" himself from the views of his own pastor, this is the way he characterizes one of these views:  "a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam."   This and other views ascribed to Pastor Wright are actually the views of a majority of black Americans, says Black Agenda Report editor Bruce Dixon, and he wonders why the expression of that view should be banished from a campaign that, as Dixon sees it, is an effort by a black man to garner support from blacks on their "nationalistic" desire to have one of their own as President, leaving him free to court white voters by his resistance to supposed black "extremism."

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=562&Itemid=1

3/19/08

Jeremiah Wright and the shocking of white America:.  As Barak Obama delivers "the speech" which is supposed to deliver the U.S. "beyond racism" (by emphasizing a good thing about America; that it enabled him to be a serious candidate for President), author Tim Wise notices that white Americans, now as always, are eager to embrace a myth of American exceptionalism and to be "shocked" at those like Pastor Wright who insist on telling the story of racial America "like it is" or like it is well documented in non-ideological histories. Obama's dismissive characterization of his sometimes-spiritual mentor Wright as like an "old uncle" whom you love despite his irascible views, may not sit so well with some blacks who remember all too well another "uncle" in classic literature who sought to survive in a "white" world by avoiding any challenge to its racial domination.

http://www.counterpunch.org/wise03182008.html

2/18/08

Partly out of necessity from Katrina destruction of their churches, partly out of religious preference, two Methodist churches in New Orleans, one traditionally black, one white, have merged to integrate their congregations and diversify their services.

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/02/black_white_methodist_congrega.html  

2/15/08

Racial slur or motivation to action?  High school principal in Anchorage first approves and then takes down a black student organization's slogan placed in a showcase for Black history month: "The best way to hide something from black people is to put it in a book."

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/315481.html  

1/30/08

Racial tension rises in Lima Ohio after a police drug bust results in shooting deaths of a mother and her baby.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/us/30lima.html?th&emc=th

1/26/08

Re-segregation of schools proceeds apace in large U.S. cities: New report of Civil Rights Project documents the increasing tendency for white, black and Latino children to be educated in ethnically-segregated schools. With persistent residential segregation and after a decade of Supreme Court forbidden bussing to achieve racial balance, the only glimmer of prospect for integration is in the country's (formerly "lily white") suburbs and rural areas into which minorities have increasingly been moving.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0125/p01s01-ussc.html  

1/13/08

The race card in presidential politics: Who is playing it?  As attention turns to South Carolina, with its heavily African American population, the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama display elements of hyper-sensitivity about any references to race, including Bill Clinton's reference to Obama's claims of exceptionalism as a "fairy tale" and Hillary Clinton's allegedly disparaging remark about Martin Luther King.  Some black Clinton supporters are "outraged" about accusations of racism against the Clintons; others like Jesse Jackson are "troubled" by these their allegedly racist remarks.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/12/6343/  

1/11/08

"The biggest fairy tale I've ever seen " is Bill Clinton's blast at Barak Obama for the latter's hitching his political star to an appealing but vapid call to "change" and trying to distinguish himself from Hillary Clinton on that basis. President Clinton's point is that, in fact, Obama's positions on public issues, to the extent they can be determined, are identical to those of Hillary Clinton.  Glen Ford of Black Agenda agrees, and points to several years of his futile efforts to to verify the "progressive" credentials of Barak Obama.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/01/barack-hillary-and-the-sinister-nothingness-of-%e2%80%9cchange%e2%80%9d/

11/18/07

What happened to the Coingressional Black Caucus?  According to Glen Ford, it has "cancer," an affliction whose symptoms are sell-out of black community political interests to corporate cash, as orchestrated through the Democratic Leadership Council.  It started with four black Democrats who voted for the invasion of Iraq, including Albert Wynn from the D.C. suburb of Prince George's County, Maryland.  It spread to the 10 members who supported the anti-bankruptcy bill and has become morose as a progressive influence in the Democratic.  Cure for the disease?  Attack one cell at a time with adequately (not corporate) funded candidates like Donna Edward, who almost beat Wynn in 06 and will challenge him again in 08.

http://www.alternet.org/story/68191/?page=1

11/8/07

A worse President than George W. Bush?  A Black Agenda Report columnist asserts that Rudy Giuliana, off his record of racism and corruption as Mayor of New York, would fit that bill if a "nightmarish scenario" should result in his election.

http://www.alternet.org/story/67234/

11/6/07

Democrats on U.S. Civil Rights Commission accuse Bush administration of packing the groups with conservatives by appointing Republicans who had re-registered as independents.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/11/06/maneuver_gave_bush_a_conservative_rights_panel/

10/24/07

Reverse discrimination case in New Orleans, in which DA fired white employees in 2003, has resulted in $3.7 million court award which DA says he cannot pay.

http://blog.nola.com/updates/2007/10/jordan_no_needs_to_bail_out_da.html  

10/23/07

For all that American blacks have benefitted by their allegiance to the Democratic Party, they might as well go green (Green Party that is...) - So says Oakland poet, novelist and playwright Ishmael Reed, noting that Bill Clinton's welfare reform helped create intolerable economic conditions for black families and that his administration presided over the largest rate ever of the incarceration of black men, while the "other Clinton's" most likely presidential rival, Rudy Giuiliani, perfected the fine art of "running against the nigger" in appealing to the white vote by appealing to their felt need to be "tough" on black behaviors.

http://www.counterpunch.com/reed10222007.html  

10/16/07

"Confessions of a Video Vixen". One title in a rash of "ghetto lit" books featuring sex, violence and "hip cool" life styles that have been marketed to young black readers.  Black writers with "serious" literary intentions are denouncing this trend.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071029/alexander

9/30/07

In a black neigborhood, you're more likely to find a McDonald's or a liquor store thana supermarket. This is one of the myriad of "racial stress" explanations being offered by neonatalogists for the results of a new national survey showing that infant mortality is twice as high among black as among white children.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/20099.html  

9/30/07

Community leaders in Philadelphia are critical of the plan of the black community to put 10,000 people on the street to help reduce the violence that has already produced over 300 homicides this year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/us/30philadelphia.html?th&emc=th                                            

9/27/07

Ffrom Tulia, Texas in '99 to Jena, Louisiana in '07...Has racial justice in America really chaned in those years? A veteran of both those incidents of small town racism comments on the proclivity of Americans to accept racial injustice until the situation is forced to public attention.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/26/4120/

9/25/07

Bar in Virginia is hit with race discrimination suit after it refuses to serve customers wearing hair styles of cornrows, dreadlocks or twists.

http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070924/NEWS01/70924020  

9/21/07

Civil rights era deja vu as 10,000 converge on Jena Louisiana to protest treatment of black students accused of attempted murder in assault on a white student.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/us/21jena.html?th&emc=th

8/31/07

Million Fathers March movement seeks more involvement of black and other fathers in their children's school life.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0831/p02s01-usgn.html

8/11/07

For black America, does it "take a revolution every 40 years?"   King-Harbor Hospital, built in south LA in response to the Watts riot in 1965. has suffered years of neglect and is now about to lose its federal funding and may well close.  What will it take to restore the decades of black progress following the racial turbulence of the 1960s?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/10/AR2007081001919.html?wpisrc=newsletter

7/23/07

As school placement based on race has been challenged in the courts, efforts to achieve racial diversity by placement based on socio-economic is being tried.  The experience in Cambridge MA is not encouraging, as racial segregation has actually increased with placement based on income level.

http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2007/07/23/an_imbalance_grows_in_cambridge_schools/

7/13/07

Democratic presidential candidates at Detroit NAACP vie with one another for black support as they promise reduction in rich-poor gap.  Barack Obama received the "loudest applause."

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070713/METRO/707130393  

7/10/07

The "n-word" gets a ceremonial NAACP "burial" in Detroit, joining Jim Crow who was buried in 1944.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.naacp10jul10001518,0,2135190.story?coll=bal-home-headlines

7/4/07

White students in Jena LA high school hang black nooses on a "white tree" under which only whites were allowed to sit.  They are given mild punishments for this, and resulting unrest in the black community leads to incident in which a white student is "beaten" with a "deadly" weapon, a black student's tennis shoe.  At this point the whole tradition of all-white justice swings into action to convict one student with what could amount to 40 years of imprisonment, with other trials pending for defendants who have been jailed for months with huge bails set. (Since our President has now announced himself against the "excessive" jail sentencing of Libby, maybe he will want to apply his new-found compassion to commuting sentences in these cases.)

http://www.counterpunch.org/quigley07032007.html

6/29/07

Supreme Court in (the usual) 5-4 decision, strikes down programs of school assignment based on race in Seattle and Louisville.  A dissenter, J. Paul Stevens, says bitterly that no member of the Court when he came on in 1975 would have voted this way; and Clarence Thomas responds equally bitterly that school integration schemes have the "shelf life" of tenure on the Court of another dissenter, Stephen Breyer.  The only thread of Brown v. Maryland left after the decision was that one of the majority 5, Anthony Kennedy, insists that the Chief Justice Robert's majority opinion was too "dismissive" in its overall rejection of racial balance efforts, which he does not see as inherently unconsitutional.  Supporters of school integration should perhaps be more concerned about Kennedy's "shelf life."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/washington/29scotus.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th  

6/13/07

Black attorney general in Georgia is accused of anti-black bias in, among other cases, his hard-line prosecution of a black man with a 10 year prison sentence for consensual sex when both he and his partners were minors.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070613/ap_on_re_us/teen_sex_case;_ylt=AmfPssQz2lZgg4tu9AUPfMlG2ocA

6/7/07

Critic says many members of black congressional caucus made a "compact with the devil" in signing onto an agreement to allow them some air time on presidential debates sponsored by Fox News, reputed to be the most "anti-black" of networks.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/06/1702/  

6/6/07

Avandia marketing and black Americans: Smart "niche advertising" or still another Tuskegee syphilis situation?  As the GlaxoSmithKline medication for type 2 diabetes comes under congressional investigation for its safety, analysts note a possible backlash in black American community of the company's marketing the drug especially among African Americans, recalling the notorious 40-year research program in which black men afflicted with syphilis were treated as "guinea pigs" for a drug testing, unbeknownst to themselves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/06/business/media/06adco.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th 

5/18/07

Would a Barack Obama presidency be good for African-Americans?  A writer for Black Agenda Report says no, that Obama's perspective that "there is no black America" is well-designed to make white voters feel good about voting for him, but very bad indeed for black Americans' need for a leader who will address the real problems of their people, as Obama is disinclined to do, as he cannot even mention "racism" in his rhetoric.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=211&Itemid=34

4/30/07

"We'll have pallbearers, euologies, and sisters fainting."  NAACP official in Detroit describes the group's annual fund-raiser which, in the aftermath of the Don Imus flap, a mock funeral for the "N-word" would be conducted with Bill Clinton the guest preacher. Since Imus used the term "nappy headed" in referring to female college athletes, it's not entirely clear which n-word they were "burying."

http://gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070430/WIRE/704300308/-1/news

4/28/07

Arsons and KKK cross-burnings upset the racial peace in an upscale Baltimore suburb.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.charles28apr28,0,7322930.story?coll=bal-local-headlines

4/17/07

Demand made for Washington PA mayor to resign follows an episode of disparaging remarks about black citizens.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07107/778609-58.stm

4/16/07

The way we "do" scandals in America is perfectly illustrated in the current flap which resulted in the firing and public castigation of Don Imus.  A pattern (of media racism in this case) that is well known and widely practiced is tolerated until one of its practitioners goes "too far," that is, so far beyond the range of normal crime-and-redemption spectacles that those in authority find themselves forced to take action against that behavior which they long had tolerated.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn04142007.html  

4/7/07

April 4th comes and goes unnoticed...again:.  Martin Luther King was assassinated April 4, 1968 and, although a trial in 1999 resulted in a conviction involving a man who was said to have conspired with U.S. government agencies, the media has consistently ignored this finding...to the detriment of our ability today to understand the lessons of King's life and death.

http://www.countercurrents.org/janson060407.htm  

3/31/07

Charges of racial bias and inadequacies in juvenile detention facilities in Texas are highlighted by a case in which a black teenage girl spends a year in one of the facilities for "shoving" a teacher's aide in a school lunchroom while a white student got probation after burning down her parent's house.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4676774.html

3/12/07

"Stepping" as an art form is being used increasingly to motivate black children toward academic achievement.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/howard/bal-te.ho.stepping12mar12,0,7605974.story  

3/4/07

Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma votes to rescind citizenship status of tribal members descended from a period in which Cherokees owned and intermarried with slaves.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070304/ap_on_re_us/cherokees_freedmen_vote  

3/1/07

Increasing support of Barack Obama for President among black voters is among the trends presaging a "real horse race" in Democratic primaries.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0301/p02s01-uspo.html

2/24/07

Black leader issues ringing call for a "Marshall Plan" to rescue America's "dark ghettoes". The ethnic cleansing of New Orleans post-Katrina is a wake-up call to America and her black population.  Ron Daniels proposes an initiative  for community reconstruction that will borrow from the name and prestige of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X to push, as did these leaders, for the elimination of foreign military interventions and the investment of our resources in the revitalization of our communities and the empowerment of our poor. He indicates that this should be made an issue for the 08 Presidential campaign. Where are you, Barak Obama? Dennis Kucinich?

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=30&ItemID=12192

2/23/07

Divide and subjugate:   Anti-immigration movement and mainstream media have cooperated to create a "conflict story line" of the relation between immigrants and African-Americans that has obscured the actual identity of political interest of the two communities.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=30&ItemID=12176

2/18/07

"State of Black Asheville" gets a thorough airing at a North Carolina conference.

http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200770217051   

2/14/07

Skirting free speech questions, Westchester County NY votes to ban the use of the "N-word."

http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20070213/3020793.asp  

2/13/07

Gathering of political leaders and 8,000 other people is convened in a Black Summit meeting in Hampton Virginia to discuss problems and prospects of black Americans.

http://www.examiner.com/a-558643~Black_Summit_Draws_Thousands_to_Va_.html  

1/30/07

Black homicide rates are higher in Pennsylvania than any other state.

http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/16577299.htm  

1/29/07

Will blacks support Barack Obama for president? Past history of black support for black candidates suggests not, as does the fact of Obama's marginal position with reference to issues of particular black American interests.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0129/p09s02-coop.html  

1/28/07

Feared community conflict in Long Beach CA fails to develop after 9 black students were convicted of assaulting 3 young white women.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-react27jan27,0,3041082.story?coll=la-home-headlines

1/26/07

In the wake of impending voter referendums barring racial considerations in college admission decisions following the example of Michigan, colleges throughout the U.S. are struggling to find ways to increase their racial "diversty" without explicit acknowledgement of preference for minorities in their admissions policies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/26/education/26affirm.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

1/24/07

Blood on the wall is threatened.  A mosque in Fallujah?  No, the Georgia state legislature.  This is the description by a black lawmaker if a proposal to split Fulton County into two counties---Milton County for the suburbs, Fulton for Atlanta---reaches the floor of the legislature.  Critics see it as a racist effort to deprive the city of its tax base and relieve suburbanites from supporting municipal services.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/226280,CST-NWS-atl24.article  

1/24/07

When gentrification and racism mix: KKK vandalizes a flower shop in a section of San Franciso undergoing change from a multi-ethnic to a "white" neighborhood.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/23/BAGU1NN7CG1.DTL  

1/15/07

Giving a party when nobody comes:  Lamenting the segregation of the "club scene" in MLK's Atlanta, a "Unity Party" is held at the Lotus Lounge to promote "diversity," but few whites come.

http://www.ajc.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/accessatlanta/peachbuzz/entries/2007/01/14/unity_party_see.html

1/15/07

NPR radio segment on MLK's "Mountain Top" speech the night before his death, including excerpts from his extemporaneous speech and interview with a pastor familiar with the circumstances of the speech having been delivered.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6854154

12/23/06

In the face of a Michigan ballot referendum invalidating affirmative action, city of Detroit has no intention of abandoning its program of preference for contracts with businesses owned by minorities and women,  basing its refusal on U.S. constitution and national laws.

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061222/METRO/612220403/1003

11/19/06

Milwaukee officials are investigating allegations of impropriety in distribution of proceeds of a "redlining" suit against an insurance company accused of rate discrimination against black home buyers, many of whom may be required to return over-payments.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=532527  

8/14/06

Justice delayed...388 surviving Tuskegee Airmen and they are dwindling fast. Five months after Congress voted them Congressional Gold Medal, they still haven't received them; "design changes" are cited as reason.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/13/AR2006081300648.html?referrer=email

5/3/06

The city of Sandy Springs, Georgia faces charges of blatant racism after the city council passes an ordinance forcing an early closing for bars and clubs owned almost exclusively by African-Americans:

http://www.11alive.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=79353

4/30/06

Race will be a factor in New Orleans ruboff election for mayor:

http://www.louisianaweekly.com/weekly/news/articlegate.pl?20060501c

4/30/06

African-American enrollment in law schools takes a precipitous plunge while the overall number of black lawyers takes the same route:

http://cbs2chicago.com/seenon/local_story_114205247.html

4/23/06

Nebraska legislators plan to re-segregate public schools in Omaha: separate but not equal:  http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/3082/continued/315#continued

4/22/06

New Orleans votes for mayor today amidst uncertainty and mystery about the degree of black participation in that vote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/22/us/22election.html?th&emc=th

4/21/06

Jim Crow on the ballot in New Orleans mayoral election as evacuees fight to return to a reconstructed city and business interests have an agenda of "ethnic and class cleansing":  http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0420-21.htm

4/11/06

Racism in action: Capitol police treatment of Cynthia McKinney, compounded by legal over-reaction and media pillorying:

http://counterpunch.org/marshall04102006.html

3/20/06

New studies show deepening plight of young black Americans in terms of joblessness, poor education and incarceration: 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/national/20blackmen.htmlhomepage

3/11/06

Gentrification of housing in Atlanta leads to decline in city's black population:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/11/national/11atlanta.html?th&emc=th

3/10/06

Anthony Prior on legacy of racism in professional sports:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060309_anthony_prior_nfl_racism/  

3/1/06

Cannick: Black pulpits being sold to Bush administration in effort to buy black votes and

divide the race on wedge issues like gay marriage:

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0301-26.htm

2/25/06

Notable Mardi Gras Absences Reflect Loss of Black Middle Class

in New Orleans

http://www.amhersttimes.com/index.php?option=com_view&id=841&Itemid=27

2/21/06

Flap over Bryant Gumbel's description of lack of black athletes and audiences at Torino

Winter Olympics; they "look like a GOP convention" 

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0221-20.htm

2/13/06

Clinton in Atlanta: "what are you going to do about the King Center?" 

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0213-25.htm

2/9/06

Studies show increase in inter-racial dating:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-02-07-colorblind_x.htm?csp=N016&RM_Exclude=aol

2/6/06

Bob Herbert: U.S. addiction to violence ignores King's message:

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0205-23.htm

2/3/06

Smothering the King Legacy With Kind Words: 

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0202-23.htm

2/2/06

Social security reform proposals and African Americans:

http://www.cbpp.org/1-18-06socsec.htm

2/2/06

Racism in the NFL:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060206/zirin

2/1/06

Coretta Scott King, a "full partner in the dream"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/31/AR2006013101598_2.html?referrer=email

1/11/06       

Conservatives try to capture MLK's legacy to their own political agenda:

http://counterpunch.org/hutchinson01112006.html

1/7/06        

Racism and Injustice in Alabama Courts:

http://counterpunch.org/chestnut01072006.html

1/7/06        

Christian right's Justice Sunday a travesty of MLK's concept of social justice:

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0107-24.htm

Books:

Shawki, Black Liberation and Socialism:

http://www.haymarketbooks.org/Merchant2/merchant.mv?aymarket&Product_Code=RCRBLS

Video/Film:

Other Media:

FLORIDA

STATEWIDE

Websites:

Analysis & views:

11/11/09

TO BE YOUNG, FLORIDIAN AND BLACK...AND LIVING YOUR WHOLE LIFE IN PRISON. In the United States, 109 people have been sentenced to life without parole for non-homicidal crimes and 76 of them were living in Florida; of the 73 of them 14 or younger, every one is black. In two Supreme Court cases from Florida now being argued, attorneys for the imprisoned children are claiming that these sentences constitute "cruel and unusual punishment" like the death penalty which has been deemed unconstitutional when carried out against children.

12/4/07

Data shows large disparity in rates of incarceration of blacks and whites for drug convictions.  In central Florida these range from Polk and Orange Counties where black incarceration rates are 4 times those of whites to Volusia, where they are 22 times.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/crime/orl-drugs0407dec04,0,101285.story?coll=orl_tab01_layout

2/28/07

Florida's latest endangered species: The black male:  Last year the legislature approved a Council on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys and this week the Council held its first meeting, with rhetoric about how we need to protect black males as assiduously as we do Florida's alligators and other wild life. This could get some interesting reactions from the black community.

http://gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070228/LOCAL/702280313/-1/news 

Other information sources:

FLORIDA LOCALITIES

Websites:

Analysis and views:

Orange Co.:

12/9/09

Schools in Orange County FL are ready to "settle" with a group of plaintiffs in a law suit claiming racial discrimination that was instituted in 1962.

Jacksonville:

10/21/09

"Waffle House murder case" in Jacksonville may decide whether a black man, in "self defense," can defend his date against the harassments of white construction workers

Orlando:

6/12/09

Orlando: New Evans High to be built on site of "old" Evans High: Now does that promote racial segregation?: A civil rights suit against the Orange County school district makes this claim.  The district's original plan was to re-build the "dilapidated" school, located in a mostly-black neighborhood, to another site several miles away in a mostly-white neighbohood.  After protests of people in the planned new site, the district decides to rebuild Evans at its current location, an action that precipitates the law suit.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/education/orl-evans-rebuilding-investigation,0,3123361.story

Jacksonville:

1/25/09

"Community engagement" group in Jacksonville focuses on high dropout rate of black youth in Duval County schools.

http://www.jacksonville.com/news/metro/2009-01-25/story/group_focuses_on_black_grad_rate

Jacksoniville:

1/13/09

New report by Jacksonville Children's Commission paints a "sobering" picture in the disparity in life chances for children based on their race.

http://www.jacksonville.com/news/metro/schools/2009-01-13/story/depressing_racial_split_shown_to_start_at_birth  

Jacksonville:

8/17/08

"Quench the violence" campaign in Jacksonville as a religious ministry hands out bottles of water to symbolize the effort to "save a race" from extermination in the city's escalated violence in the black community.

http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/081708/met_319539027.shtml

West Palm Beach:

7/27/08

West Palm Beach-based white supremacy group says that Obama presidency bid is producing a surge of interest in the group.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2008/07/26/m1a_white_supremacist_0727.html  

Orlando:

7/12/08

City administrator reverses decision to remove a photograph of a black caddy serving white golfers at an Orlando golf course.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-dubs1208jul12,0,5934008.story

Orlando:

7/11/08

City commissioner in Orlando forces removal from a refurbished golf course of a long-displayed "historic" picture of a barefooted black man holding the hole flag for a group of white golfers.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-dubs1108jul11,0,6070675.story  

Jacksonville:

3/25/08

Florida Times Union article reports interviews of many Jacksonville-area black men and women who have "pioneered" the rise to political prominence of people of their race

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/032508/met_261274420.shtml

Tampa:

3/20/08

Tampa residents will have a chance to sample for themselves the "fiery rhetoric" of Obama pastor Jeremiah Wright, as he returns next week as he frequently does for a local revival.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/article424829.ece 

Daytona Beach:

3/8/08

Black on Harley trend in the U.S. is noted at Daytona Beach Bike Week, where an increasing number (or least visibility) of African American bikers is being noted.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/tourism/orl-blackbikers0808mar08,0,5473177.story  

Flagler Beach:

3/7/08

Flagler Beach FL was a "sundown community" in which blacks were not allowed to live in the early 20th century.  Today, critics say, FB is de facto the same, with only 26 blacks in a town of 5000 population.

http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Local/newFLAG01030708.htm

Volusia Co.:

2/17/08

Volusia County officials try to deal with the state-wide reality that young black males have a hard struggle to remain in school and achieve high-performance levels.

http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Headlines/frtHEAD07021708.htm  

Ocala:

1/13/08

Wesley Snipes attempts change of venue for his trial on federal tax fraud from Ocala, a community which he says is marked by racial prejudice.

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/jan/13/me-ocala-rejects-prejudice/

Jacksonville:

1/12/08

MLK breakfast meeting in Jacksonville receives a "depressing" report on race relations in the city, actually described as two cities, a poverty-striken black one and a well-off white one.

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/011208/met_235950100.shtml

DeLand:

12/17/07

DeLand bars black motorcycle club from holding annual event at Municipal Airport.  Bikers claim racial discrimination, officials say the misbehavior of the bikers was the cause of cancellation.

http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Headlines/frtHEAD02121707.htm  

Orlando:

9/10/07

Teachers in predominantly white and affluent Orange County schools more "meritorious" than those in poor black ones?  Orlando Sentinel survey shows that twice as many teachers in the "white" schools were given merit pay increases under the much-criticised and now-defunct STAR system.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-star0907sep09,0,3106778.story?coll=orl_tab01_layout

Miami:

7/9/07

Northwest Miami High School, in Liberty City, is both a beacon of hope for the local black community and the recipient of unwanted publicity about academic failure and a sex scandal.

http://www.miamiherald.com/457/story/164522.html  

Tampa;

6/29/07

Effects of Supreme Court ruling on racial basis of school assignment expected to be minimal in Hillsborough County but potentially very serious in Pinellas County.

http://www.tbo.com/news/metro/MGBSX0S4I3F.html

Daytona Beach:

5/31/07

NAACP wants talk show host fired for his remark about a black mayoral candidate, the "adage" that "the higher the monkey climbs, the better you can see his ass," saying "monkey" is associated with blacks in public stereotypes.

http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Headlines/frtHEAD01053107.htm  

Daytona Beach:

4/1/07

In terms of attendance and available activities, this year's Black College Reunion in Daytona Beach is largely a fizzle.

http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Headlines/HEAD01040107.htm

Daytona Beach:

3/29/07

Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, which first established a Black College Reunion Weekend, is now trying to reclaim an event that has, from the founder's view, gotten out of hand with the party atmosphere of the beaches, as they offer a more sedate weekend of activities for participants.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/volusia/orl-vbcr2907mar29,0,7444840.story?coll=orl-home-promo

Daytona Beach:

3/25/07

Black College Reunion weekend is coming again to Daytona Beach, in smaller numbers than formerly, and Mayor won't repeat the "pull up your britches" routine of a black Mayor at an earlier BCR event.

http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Headlines/frtHEAD01032507.htm  

Orange Co.:

3/6/07

"Deal" approaches between NAACP and Orange County FL school district: Schools would spend more money on all-black schools and NAACP would certify that the school district is not racially discrimination. The deal could end 45 years that the school system has been under federal court supervision.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/education/orl-mdeseg0607mar06,0,7167689.story?coll=orl-home-headlines

Palatka:

2/22/07

Efforts being made by alumnae to preserve Central Academy in Palatka, a remnant of Florida's history of segregated education.

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/022207/met_7725953.shtml

Orlando:

2/17/07

FBI's role in a neo-Nazi white supremacist rally in a black neighborhood last year is being debated in Orlando.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-hate1707feb17,0,499088.story?coll=orl-home-headlines  

Ocala:

1/15/07

Free at last, free at last!  Marion County school district "celebrates" MLK day by seeking  release from its status of being one of the last school districts in the U.S. to remain under federal court supervision for failure to meet guidelines for desegregation.  Although it hasn't met the mandated level of minority teacher recruitment, it expects the court to declare the school district "close enough" and to grant local school officials "some freedom." 

http://www.ocala.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070114/NEWS/201140361/1001/NEWS01  

Volusia Co.:

1/15/07

Volusia County school board looks for a more systematic approach to education about civil rights in America, not just the yearly short interval of "show and tell" centered around MLK Day and black history month.

http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/WestVolusia/wvlWEST01011507.htm  

Jacksonville:

1/10/07

Martin Luther King's daughter Yolanda urges a Jacksonville FL audience to "get up off your apathy" to help realize her father's still-unfulfilled dream.

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/011007/met_7261336.shtml

Jacksonville:

11/15/06

Controversy in Jacksonville fire department: after several nooses painted on lockers of black firefighters were found, the city investigates race relations in the department and a provocative flier hits the streets showing a black fireman on one side carrying a white girl from a flaming building, on the other his returning to the station to find a noose on his locker.

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/111506/met_6244288.shtml

Orlando:

10/2/06

Second part of Orlando Sentinel's series of Ferdinand Drive describes how blacks moved into the neighborhood in the 1990s as whites moved out.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-neworlando02_106oct02,0,4831563.story?page=2&coll=orl-home-promo  

Orlando:

10/1/06

Race in Orlando: a three-part series by the Orlando Sentinel examines the evolution of one street (Ferdinand) of 17 houses represented as a microcosm of an increasingly diverse city.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-neworlando01_1606oct01,0,2404321.story?coll=orl-home-headlines

Daytona Beach:

8/17/06

50% of  black 19% of white homebuyers in Volusia County get mortgages with high interest rates; "risk" factor for black buyers is cited.

http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/News/Headlines/frtHEAD01081706.htm

Miami:

8/14/06

Citizens and agencies in Liberty City, Miami are trying to build a united community front against the wave of black-on-black violence, including the deaths of several children, that has swept the area over the last year.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15264175.htm

Orlando:

2/26/06

Neo-Nazi rally marches through Parramore neighborhood in Orlando http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NEO_NAZI_RALLY?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US

Jacksonville:

2/21/06

NAACP calls for Federal probe into Fire sattion nooses

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/local/news-article.aspx?storyid=52272

Gainesville:

2/7/06

New local black empowerment group criticized for voting restrictions: http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060207/LOCAL/202070331/1078  

Tallahassee:

2/2/06

Cornel West speaks at FAMU: 

http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060202/NEWS01/602020346/1010/NEWS01  

Other information sources

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