Tupac Associate Young Noble’s Death Illuminates Alarming Fact About Suicide Rates Among Black Men
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Recent Dissent Proves She’s Unafraid to Challenge Her Colleagues—Unlike Clarence Thomas
Black Internet is Not Trying to Hear About Skip Bayless’ ‘White Guilt’ Over ‘Sinners’
Black America Reacts To Elon Musk’s Plans to Start a Third Political Party
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How to Heckle Barack?
Over at the mothership, Krissah Thompson has a story examining the lively debate among black Americans regarding how best to criticize Barack Obama—if they do so at all. Her rather didactic thesis: As the nation’s first black president settles into the office, a division is deepening between two groups of African Americans: those who want…
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Fake Loan Fixes Line the Path from Bad to Worse
The mortgage industry has been crowing for a couple of years now about its good faith efforts to fix the failed loans that it shouldn’t have made in the first place. The point, of course, has been to avoid any government mandate on modifications—a goal they’ve thus far accomplished. But the proof is in the…
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Scrutiny of Obama Splits Blacks
Jeff Johnson knows how to make his audiences squirm. The young, black radio and TV political commentator waits for the discussion to turn to the topic being talked about ceaselessly, incessantly, ad nauseam: the meaning of the barrier-breaking election of Barack Obama. Then, in his laid-back style, he says, “The real issue for me is…
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Can Public Boarding Schools Make Education Equal?
With the usual caveat emptor on me and education policy, I point you to an interesting article my friend Steve Gray wrote for TIME recently. Steve’s piece introduced me to a new idea: Public boarding schools for students from poor communities. I so often hear that the complexity of educating kids from neglected neighborhoods and…
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Murder in Binghamton
On Friday Jiverly Wong, after losing his job and feeling ridiculed by his immigrant classmates, walked into Binghamton’s American Civic Association and killed thirteen people. Last week a man walked into a senior citizen center in Carthage, North Carolina and open-fired. Before that another man drove through his Alabama town and killed several. I don’t…
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Black Man on Top of the World
“I was in the lead that had overshot the mark a couple of miles,” Matthew Henson told a reporter in March 1955, relating the moment when, 46 years earlier, he knew he had conquered the world. “We went back then, and I could see that my footprints were the first at the spot.” “The spot”…
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Got Game, But No Diploma
If the championship in NCAA men’s basketball was based on the graduation rates of black players on the teams, it would be Duke and Villanova taking the court tonight in Detroit rather than Michigan State and the University of North Carolina. Both Duke, which lost in the third round, and Villanova who lost to UNC…
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Why the U.S. Must Go to the Race Conference
Underlying President Barack Obama’s historic election as the first African-American president of the United States remains a campaign promise to find new ways of re-engaging the world and to create a “new American leadership” for a “common humanity.” In recent years, unilateral foreign policy endeavors and egregious human rights abuses have resulted in a dramatic…
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Can We Learn From "The Coon Man?"
How appetizing does coon cobbler sound to you? If your response is anywhere along the lines of, “Fool, are you out of your country mind?” you’re exactly the type of person Glemie Dean Beasley is talking about. Beasley is a 69-year-old Detroit raccoon hunter and meat salesman who believes that many of us are unprepared…
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Monday's Headlines
AP: High Court Upholds Abu-Jamal Conviction; Black Militants Still Have ‘Free Mumia’ to Fall Back On AJE: Israeli Army Won’t Shoot Messenger, Will Shoot Medic According to Reports CNN: South African Leader Has Corruption Charges Dropped; South African Leader Not Mandela FG: Finally: Thunder and Lightning Give Us Tickets to the Gun Show ESPN: Class…