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The Proof is in the Racist Pudding
Here’s the problem with parlor games about who is and is not a racist: It’s exactly the conversation that conservatives have spent 30 years fostering in order to drive discussions about racial justice out of public policy. If racism is nothing more than an individual holding hateful ideas, then it’s impossible to correct and of…
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What the ACORN Video Actually Reveals
So, two white kids dress up in pimp-and-ho drag and walk into a social service agency with a sneer… nope, it’s not the set up for a one-liner, but serious “news.” It’s how 25-year-old James O’Keefe and 20-year-old Hannah Giles made their now-famous gotcha video to prove community-organizing group ACORN is, well, helping poor people.…
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Jimmy Carter, True Son of the South, Hits Nail on Head
Jimmy Carter is a son of the South. Not the New South of relocated corporate headquarters and (foreclosed) McMansions, but Jim Crow’s South. So we’ll all have to excuse his refusal to act like he doesn’t hear Glenn Beck’s vicious dog whistle. He knows too well the coded language of political racism because he witnessed…
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10 Reasons African Americans Should March on Washington About Health Care
Never mind Joe Wilson and the tea baggers. You know who really ought to be breaking congressional decorum and marching on Washington about health care? Black people. We ought to be so angry about the disastrous health care system that we disrupt society at every level until it gets fixed. Why? Well, don’t expect our…
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Banks Won't Clean Up Their Mess Voluntarily
Update on the president’s foreclosure relief plan: Still no relief. White House spin and credulous headlines notwithstanding, the Treasury Department’s own numbers make it clear that the modest program is no match for the extraordinary problem. Why? Because if more than two years of timid, piecemeal federal initiatives have proved anything, it’s that banks cannot…
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Will Obama Pull the Reform "Trigger"?
Barack Obama has reached the put up or shut up moment of his presidency—and he appears to get it. His Labor Day speech was described as feisty; he even trotted out that old “fired up” anecdote. No doubt he’ll come on strong in addressing Congress tonight, too. But here’s what Hillary Clinton got right during…
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Foreclosure 3.0: Speculators Exploit the Wreckage
The foreclosure wrecking ball plowing through black neighborhoods keeps swinging. Yesterday’s predatory, subprime lenders have been replaced by today’s speculating, absentee owners. Alyssa Katz has been on the housing predation story for at least a decade, and in this month’s American Prospect she investigates what’s happening to all those foreclosed houses piling up in black…
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The Simple Truth about HIV Prevention
There is much about the HIV/AIDS epidemic that’s terribly complicated. The wily bug itself has defied science’s best efforts to kill it for three decades. That said, there are also simple truths we’re all too ready to ignore, particularly when it comes to prevention. I’m referring to neither the abstinence-until-marriage fantasy nor the just-wear-a-condom mantra;…
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Words to Govern By
When Sen. Ted Kennedy eulogized Robert Kennedy in June 1968, he also offered what may be the most fitting coda for his own remarkable public life. Of RFK, he declared, My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent…
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Semenya's Race and Sex Struggle
What stood out most as Caster Semenya faced reporters at last week’s track and field world championships was that she’s just a kid. Baby-faced and leery, she parceled out answers to ostensibly innocuous questions. “What was your running background before this year?” But a more insidious query lurked for the teen: What kind of freak are…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
