Writing at CNN, Tavis Smiley argues that racism is one reason it took the federal government so long to change harsh, mandatory sentencing guidelines for certain low-level, nonviolent drug offenders. The laws primarily affected minorities, especially black men, he says. As I watched the announcement by Attorney General Eric Holder this past week in San Francisco…

Tavis Smiley, writing at the Huffington Post, demands a Congressional Gold Medal for the children killed nearly 50 years ago by a white supremacist at Birmingham, Ala.’s 16th Street Baptist Church. Nearly 50 years ago, a bomb planted by white supremacists killed four little girls in Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church. Twenty-two others, mostly children,…

Writing at the Huffington Post, Tavis Smiley channels Martin Luther King Jr. in his response to the tragic loss of life at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Last Friday afternoon I received a call from Jay Leno asking if I would appear as a guest on The Tonight Show to try to help make some sense…

Writing at the Huffington Post, Tavis Smiley evaluates the current “cliffhanger” through the lens of poverty. First, we hit the debt ceiling. Now we’re hanging over the fiscal cliff. Next, the walls start to close in on millions of Americans, particularly the poor. The news media is covering this story everyday as if this is…

“We celebrate this electoral victory today, but what about tomorrow?” Tavis Smiley asks at the Huffington Post. This past Sunday on “Meet the Press,” the presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin said the following, “Latinos, women and young people — that is the new governing coalition.” OUCH. To be sure, there are Black folk in each…

Voters shouldn’t have to accept the idea that there’s no person of color qualified to moderate, Tavis Smiley writes at the Huffington Post. It is apparently easier for a person of color to be President of the United States of America than it is for a journalist of color to be selected to moderate a…