Politics
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The Confederate Flag Flap Is a Distraction From Tough Issues of Racism
Momentum is building fast as an almost unstoppable wave of outrage calls for the removal of state-sanctioned Confederate flags. The fact that treasonous rebel flags are still flying strong atop or next to government buildings 150 years after the Civil War itself is as surreal as it is, frankly, believable. The rebel jack has always…
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Meet the (White) Press: Racism in ‘Progressive’ Media Spaces
If more evidence were needed of how black bodies are pawns in political chess, look no further than Sunday’s episode of Meet the Press. Just days after nine African Americans were murdered inside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., in what many agree was an act of anti-black terrorism, Chuck Todd and his producers decided…
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Congressman: Those Using Tragedy to Take Down Confederate Flag Are ‘Beyond Contempt’
On a day when many Republicans and Democrats in South Carolina found common ground in agreeing that the Confederate flag adjacent to the Statehouse should be removed from its perch and placed in a museum, a congressman from Alabama had a different view. Speaking to radio host Matt Murphy on Monday, Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.)…
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SC’s Gov. Nikki Haley and Other Republicans Come Out Against Confederate Flag
South Carolina’s Republican Gov. Nikki Haley and the state’s two Republican senators, Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham, along with Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, gathered at a press conference to announce their desire to remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina Statehouse grounds. Momentum has been building against the Confederate flag since nine…
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Why Won’t GOP Candidates Speak Honestly About Racism?
Last Thursday the nation awoke to the tragic news out of Charleston, S.C., that a white gunman shot and killed nine black parishioners during a weeknight Bible study. The avowed racist deliberately targeted these black Christians, driving over 100 miles from his home to murder the six women and three men who had congregated in…
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Republicans Are Running for President and Running From Race
A white gunman with Confederate plates who liked telling racist jokes in high school and is now telling cops of a desire to trigger a race war kills nine black people at a church that is the living definition of black liberation, but the slayings weren’t about race? Apparently Dylann Roof needed to have written…
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We Must Make Police Brutality Against Black Women an Issue in 2016
Criminal-justice reform must be an election issue for black women in 2016. More than any other group of women in the country, black women are killed, raped and victimized by intimate-partner and community violence. While they are the least protected, as the current McKinney, Texas, episode shows, black women and girls are also beaten, racially profiled and assaulted by police.…
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Liberal Friends, if You’re Worried That Blacks Are Getting Shut Out of Politics, Show Us the Money
In a recent series of rants against the evil of money in politics, prominent progressive public intellectuals have been experimenting with the new narrative that unregulated high-rolling balls of dark campaign cash are fundamentally racist. That’s obviously a racially charged notion. And given the all-powerful “cash rules everything around me” ethos that’s rapidly transforming American…
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70 Members of Congress Call on President Obama to ‘Ban the Box’
More than 70 members of Congress are calling on President Barack Obama to “ban the box” for federal jobs. The “box” in question is one that appears on federal hiring applications, asking job seekers if they have a criminal record. As part of an effort to reduce mass incarceration, many around the country have rallied for…
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Rep. Emanuel Cleaver Calls on President Obama to Tackle Rise in Black Child Suicides
After a recent shocking report revealing a near doubling in suicide rates for African-American children, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) is calling on President Barack Obama to focus on the issue. Cleaver is asking the president to create a task force between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Education. “Suicide is truly a tragedy for…