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Holder: 'Deeply Disappointed' by Voting Rights Decision
U.S. Attorney Gen. Eric Holder said he was “deeply disappointed” by the Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday in Shelby County v. Holder that essentially guts the Voting Rights Act, saying that it has the potential to negatively affect millions of Americans across the country. Speaking at a news conference after the decision, he vowed to…
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Skewering the Voting Rights Act Decision
(The Root) — To say that Twitter is unhappy with Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act is an understatement. The court struck down Section 4 of the civil rights law, which essentially kept the South from further disenfranchising black voters when it was passed in 1965. The 5-4 decision ruled that “things…
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Voting Rights: Why Section 4 Mattered
(The Root) — In the second explicitly race-related ruling this week, which legal analysts and Supreme Court observers have described as far more restrained than had been expected from the conservative-dominated court, the Supreme Court invalidated an essential portion of the Voting Rights Act. The court’s 5-4 decision voided parts of Section 4, which provided…
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Court Guts Voting Rights Act
Updated Tuesday, June 25, 12 p.m. EDT: Various civil rights groups and organizations vociferously condemned the Supreme Court’s decision to limit use of a key provision in the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which defended the Voting Rights Act before the Supreme Court, called it “an act…
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Why Do We Keep Executing People?
Thomas Cahill, the author of A Saint on Death Row, denounces capital punishment in a piece at CNN and encourages state governments to address the effects of poverty as a way to reduce crime. Kimberly McCarthy is a black woman. Black people are disproportionately represented on death row, as are blacks imprisoned throughout this country. Many would…
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Clarence Thomas Compares Affirmative Action to Slavery
David Corn, Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones, tackles U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ comments following the court’s ruling in the Abigail Fisher v. University of Texas case, particularly Thomas’ comparisons of the arguments for slavery to those for affirmative action. In the moments after the decision was released, legal experts disagreed on how much impact it could…
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Black Moors: A Complicated Portrayal
(The Root) — This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black in Western Art Archive at Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. The history of black people in Spain forms a unique part of the diasporic…
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Quote of the Day: Toni Morrison on Language
Read the full quote here and check out more of The Root’s coverage of Toni Morrison here. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University. He is also the editor-in-chief of The Root. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
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Are Unpaid Internships Worth It?
(The Root) — A debate is raging right now about internships, the lifeblood of many small businesses, and also a lifeline for many young people trying to break into difficult-to-access industries. A big question being contemplated in courtrooms as well as in the court of public opinion concerns the legality and fairness of countless unpaid…
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Liberian President: Give Money to Global Health Fund
Writing at the Huffington Post, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf urges donors to support the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, saying that it has helped her nation care for its sick and strengthen preventive health care measures. It would have been impossible to make these strides towards defeating these diseases without the international…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
