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Can Lie Detectors Filter Racist Cops?
Coopertown, Tenn., police Chief Shane Sullivan is trying to clean up his town’s image. The goal: no more race-related law-enforcement misconduct. Step 1: Give each officer applicant a polygraph test to screen out potentially problematic members of the force. But the key inquiry isn’t “Are you racist?” or “Have you ever made a racist remark?”…
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19-Year-Old Gay Black Couple's Marriage Against the Odds
On Jan. 18, David Harris and Tre’Darrius Anderson of Memphis, Tenn., tied the knot in front of Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Memorial, Clutch magazine reports. There are suggestions that, at 19 years old, they are the youngest African-American gay couple to marry in the country. But it doesn’t take an entry in Guinness World Records to…
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Daughter of Gov. George Wallace Rejects His Bigotry
Former Alabama Gov. George Wallace will always be remembered for his bigoted attitude toward African Americans, captured by his infamous declaration, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.” If his daughter Peggy Kennedy Wallace has anything to say about it, that part of the family legacy will end with her. In a commemoration of “Bloody Sunday,”…
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Candidate Wants Kenya to Stop Counting Votes
With half the votes counted in Kenya’s presidential election, one of the top contenders alleged on Thursday that the preliminary results were fraudulent and called for the vote count to be halted, the Washington Post reports. Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who made the claim, was trailing his main rival, Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, 41…
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Rand Paul Made the Right Call With the Filibuster
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson explains why the point the Republican was making about drones was worth supporting — even for those who rarely agree with him. The Republican senator from Kentucky, whom I’ve ridiculed as an archconservative kook — because that’s basically what he is — was right to call attention to the growing…
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Why You Can't Sue Yourself Into a Sorority
(The Root) — Entitlement is a finicky fruit. It can ripen into the kind of “I got this” self-confidence that helps people nail interviews, land jobs and climb ladders. But entitlement can just as easily rot into the kind of nauseating conceit that puts people off. These days, too many millennials have been accused of…
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How Do I Track Down a Slave Plantation?
(The Root) — In the 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro column entitled “Why Was Cotton ‘King’?” I described how blacks were commodified by the plantation economy in slaveholding states. For many, the trail to discovering black ancestry is paved with this sad truth and with clues in the records kept by plantations. Below, a…
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No One Should Have to Live in Fear of Violence
In a piece for the Huffington Post, Valerie Jarrett, presidential senior adviser and chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls, praises the reauthorization and strengthening of the Violence Against Women Act. Today, President Obama signed a bill that both strengthened and reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Thanks to this bipartisan…
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First Lady Enjoys a Girls' Night Out in DC
(The Root) — First lady Michelle Obama enjoyed a rare girls’ night out to see Sweet Honey in the Rock at Washington, D.C.’s Howard Theatre, according to a source who did not wish to be identified. She was spied with fellow Chicagoan Valerie Jarrett, who is senior adviser to the president, catching the 7 p.m.…
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Rowland on Colorism: Beyoncé's Mom Helped Me
Evidently, Beyoncé’s mom was more than just a stlyist to Destiny’s Child. To at least one of its members, she was also a voice of reason and an antidote to negative messages about black beauty. Here’s what Kelly Rowland had to say in a recent interview in Clutch magazine about the role Tina Knowles…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
