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Is Harlem No Longer Black?
The Negro invasion must be vigilantly fought, fought until it is permanently checked, or the invaders will slowly but surely drive the whites out of Harlem. Harlem Home News, July 1911 Along the boulevards of Harlem these days, hands are wringing over the shifting demographics of the two races that still matter in this republic. …
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Bill Withers: An American in Full
Bill Withers is an American original. His voice is as clear as the wind and just as carefree. Withers has that gift from the gods so overlooked in popular songwriters: a well-tuned ear. Ringtones of his “Lovely Day” and “Just the Two of Us” summon Generation X to their cell phones. Not bad for a…
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Denzel Washington's Definitive Turn in Fences
Denzel Washington is so insightful in August Wilson’s bitingly authentic play about black life that it is downright surprising, though quite fitting, that the actor won a Tony for his performance. Authenticity usually gets the black artist nowhere with top awards judges soaked in what passes for white culture. Such shameless self-absorption leaves little room…
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Say It Ain't So, Bill!
As the dirt settles on Robert Byrd’s grave, let us reflect on the wisdom of a former U.S. president offering a post-mortem alibi for the man who began his public service as the Exalted Cyclops of the murderous Ku Klux Klan. ”They mention that he once had a fleeting association with the Ku Klux Klan,…
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Rush Limbaugh's Lies About Steinbrenner
George Steinbrenner was saluted in death by a recovering drug addict, Rush Limbaugh, as a ”cracker” who made black players rich while firing ”a bunch of white guys as managers left and right.” The Limbaugh eulogy is a sure sign that the illicit OxyContin addiction that likely made him deaf has clearly numbed his shame.…
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New York's Useless Stop-and-Harass Policy
.0005! That’s the batting average of the mayor of New York City and his police commissioner in patrolling New York City the week George Steinbrenner died. The Yankees owner would have fired them both a thousand times over for weak hitting. New Yorkers, to their credit, tried to fire their mayor by twice voting to…
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President Obama Narrows Racial Gap in Drug Sentencing
When he signed into law the bill that reduces the disparity in penalties for crack and powder cocaine offenses, President Barack Obama narrowed the “racial” gap in drug sentencing Tuesday by some 82 percent. Yet he did not close it. Civil rights leaders that struggled mightily for parity under this unjust federal policy, which filled…
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Can Obama Stop the Afghanistan War?
When radio host Earl Caldwell put on-air questions to me on New York’s WBAI-FM Friday about the upcoming trial of five U.S. soldiers charged with the wanton killing of three Afghan civilians, I measured them against the horrors of the My Lai massacre and the widespread — and unreported — killing of hundreds, if not…
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The President's Summit With Black Journalists
Horseback-riding Teddy Roosevelt might have done a double take were he allowed to gaze from his “Rough Rider” portrait in the White House at the 44th president of the United States, fielding a range of questions about his executive policies from 10 black newspaper columnists sitting around an oblong table. This uniquely nonwhite all-American scene…
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The Professor Who Schooled Tavis Smiley
Bristling in the face of the calm scholar, Tavis Smiley was having none of the lesson that Randall Kennedy was teaching on Smiley’s TV show in early September. So the Harvard law professor contented himself with taking PBS viewers to school on the complex relationship between the first black U.S. president and his African-American constituency.…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
