Politics
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No Way Out: The White House Looks at Link Between Incarceration and Poverty
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch asked what was the price of justice during a White House Convening on Incarceration and Poverty on Thursday. Right now, more than 2.2 million people are incarcerated in the U.S., a 61 percent increase since 1990, according to a new report released by the Council of Economic Advisers that found…
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The Laquan McDonald Aftermath: More Heads Need to Roll in Chicago
On Tuesday, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel fired Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy amid continued unrest stemming from the release of video footage that chronicled the killing of Laquan McDonald at the hands of Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke. McCarthy’s termination was a move that was, presumably, executed to help stabilize a situation that continues to…
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Hillary Clinton: Better for Black People Than Obama?
Editor’s note: In an article titled “Yes She Can,” a play on President Barack Obama’s inspiring 2008 campaign slogan, Michael Eric Dyson writes for the New Republic of his conversion to the belief that Hillary Clinton will do more for black people than the president himself. Calling himself a skeptic after a series of questionable…
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Killer Mike Wants You to Back Bernie Sanders
Earlier this week, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was parlayin’ with Killer Mike, throwing up what could inevitably be mistaken for gang signs, and going to soul food restaurants in “the A” like it was just a typical day in the hood. Now, if that’s not a white man trying to assimilate into blackness, I don’t…
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New White House Initiatives Are Great for Girls but Don’t Compare to My Brother’s Keeper
Blink and you would have missed it. Lost in much of the coverage of the Paris attacks, student protests and police shootings, more than a week ago, the White House announced a new series of initiatives meant to help women and girls of color. There was a daylong forum for it, a forum focused on…
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Donald Trump Is as American as the KKK
If a mad scientist locked himself in a laboratory and threw racism, sexism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, imperialism, classism, elitism and delusions of grandeur into a boiling cauldron, the result would be Donald John Trump. Donald Trump is America. In so many ways, he is what this white supremacist nation clings to with slippery fingers in last-ditch…
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The 10 Blackest Things President Obama Has Done While in Office
When President Barack Obama found a way to incorporate “folks wanna pop off” at an international press conference Monday to address people with misinformation, it was just the latest confirmation of something many of us have suspected for some time: that the president, fully secured in his second and last term in office, is not…
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When Terrorism Strikes, Black Lives Don’t Seem to Matter as Much
Of terrorism’s many destructive traits, none is more horrifying than its ability to unexpectedly snatch our normalcy from us. Recent attacks in Paris force us into somber, hug-your-loved-ones reflections: imagining the romantic, joyful energy of that city and its inhabitants suddenly shattered by the wholesale violence of others. That cruelty always unwraps the pure evil…
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4 Reasons Why No Sane Black Voter Should Be Voting for Ben Carson
Check the latest polls and see neurosurgeon-turned-wannabe-president Ben Carson surf on a sudden wave of black support. Not that black people are voting anytime soon in the Republican primary. But as Theodore R. Johnson III aptly points out on The Root, Carson’s black ratings look better in fictional, general-election matchups than those of his fellow…
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Ben Carson Is Getting a Surprise Boost From African-American Voters
Ben Carson has had a rough couple of weeks. The intense media scrutiny of his biographical claims—from attempting to stab a relative to receiving a scholarship to West Point—have called into question his personal story of redemption. His assertions that the Egyptian pyramids held grain, that Islam is incompatible with the Constitution and that prison…