In a blog post at Black Blue Dog, Dr. Boyce Watkins weighs in on the recent announcement by former Essence Editor-in-Chief Constance C.R. White that she was fired because of clashes over the way her bosses wanted to represent African-American women. He says that Essence lost its “essence” a long time ago.  The revelations by…

Congress rejected major changes to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in 2006, but not without a fight: If the Supreme Court rules Section 5 unconstitutional and sends it to Congress to fix, there may be hurdles to overcome in getting it reaffirmed, the Huffington Post reports, especially with a more divided Republican Party…

(The Root) — We’re proud to announce that the following writers are now sharing their expertise and perspectives on The Root on a regular basis: Michael Lomax, president of United Negro College Fund, is answering your questions about higher education and HBCU life each Thursday in his column, Ask Dr. Lomax. Lawrence D. Bobo, the…

Former President Bill Clinton touched down in Haiti on Sunday for a two-day visit to help promote investment in the struggling nation’s agriculture sector, the Associated Press reports. Clinton, who serves as the United Nations’ special envoy to Haiti, arrived with a delegation that will visit an agriculture school, a coffee-processing plant and a brewery,…

African-American-owned funeral homes in Chicago and from across the nation staged a procession of empty hearses Sunday on the city’s South Side to underscore the toll that gun violence is taking on Chicago’s black youths, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Police escorted more than 20 hearses through afternoon traffic, causing at least one driver to stop…

The Huffington Post is reporting that a jury has found former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick guilty of multiple counts of racketeering and exortion, attempted extortion, bribery, mail fraud, wire fraud and filing false tax returns. Both Kilpatrick and contractor Bobby Ferguson were found guilty on most counts. Kilpatrick’s 71-year-old father, Bernard Kilpatrick, was only found…

At what cost comes a higher-education degree? According to New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow, the cost of college tuition has risen 68 percent. “In the ‘new normal,’ retirement and health care costs simultaneously drive up the cost of higher education, and compete with education for limited public resources. The ‘new normal’ no longer…

As the saying goes, the biggest lie the devil tells is that he doesn’t exist, and in the Nation, novelist Walter Mosley says Americans use the same idea in refusing to acknowledge rape culture. 1. Name the real problems: Violent masculinity and victim-blaming. These are the cornerstones of rape culture and they go hand in hand. When an instance…

Salamishah Tillet is a rape survivor and co-founder of A Long Walk Home, a nonprofit that uses art to end violence against girls and women. She is also an associate professor of English studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Sites of Slavery: Citizenship, Racial Democracy, and the Post-Civil Rights Imagination. She is working…