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Credit Invisibility Means Less Economic Opportunity in Black America
“I am invisible, understand,” Ralph Ellison famously wrote, “simply because people refuse to see me.” He was speaking of the double consciousness that accompanied the burden of blackness in America more than 60 years ago. But according to Yale professor Frederick Wherry, this conundrum is not just social and political but also economic—and that sense of…
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MLK’s Daughter Talks About Her Parents’ Legacy and Her Sibling Rivalry
“There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors,” said author and political activist Helen Keller. “And no slave who has not had a king among his.” And perhaps this has never been more befitting than when applied to the famed African-American family whose name, history and legacy are synonymous with…
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Black Parents, Gay Sons and Redefining Masculinity
“As a gay black man, I find myself at the top of the list of people to hate,” wrote Michael Arceneaux for The Root five years ago. “That’s a hard fact to contend with at 25, let alone at 11. The accepted notions of how a black man should look and act are confining and…
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My Brother’s Keeper Sets Its Sights on Mentoring, With Help From Magic Johnson
“No matter who you are, or where you came from—or the circumstances into which you are born—if you work hard, if you take responsibility, then you can make it in this country.” President Barack Obama spoke those words in February when he announced his My Brother’s Keeper initiative, focused on empowering and improving the lives…
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We’re Dreaming if We Think We’ve Dealt With Racism
In 1903 W.E.B. Du Bois opined that one of the burdens of blackness was facing down an ever-present question: “How does it feel to be a problem?” More than a century later, the changes on our social and political landscape have led us to an equally challenging question: How do you solve a problem like…
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Michael Sam: What He Means to Young Gay Black Men
For every gay black boy on a playground, basketball court or football field across the country who is derided by his peers as a “f—got” or “sissy”—excluded from games and told he has no place on the team—Michael Sam is a living example that not only can they play, but they can win. “Can Michael…
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Despite Apathy Among Millennials of Color, Dems Aren’t Going to Concede 2014
With only six months to go before the midterm elections, a meta-narrative is emerging that the electoral landscape favors the GOP. Journalists, political strategists and talking heads across the political spectrum are regurgitating the pollster line that a majority of potential voters—especially the ever elusive “independent”—are leaning Republican in 2014. And polling data suggest that…
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A Harlem Church and the Hate That Produced a ‘Hate Crime’
Does God hate fags? According to Pastor James D. Manning, the answer, apparently, is “yes,” because the marque outside Manning’s ATLAH World Missionary Church in Harlem bore these words: “Jesus would stone homos. Stoning is still the law.” It’s the message that a passerby could read outside the otherwise typical-looking entrance to his church a few weeks…
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Some Folks Don’t Like Me Because I’m Black, Says Obama
It seems that some white Americans, and the modern-day Republican Party in particular, have found themselves stuck between Barack and a hard place. The nation’s tortured history of racial discrimination and violence against African Americans has left the promise of a color-blind society as elusive as Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream. President Obama has skillfully…
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Obama’s Initiative: One Promise, Different Zones
President Barack Obama is a man on a mission. As the second year of his second term commences, he embarks on a progressive agenda, mirroring the campaign of hope and change that originally inspired a new generation of voters in 2008. Key to his platform is an unapologetic focus on income inequality, the long-term unemployed…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
