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Auctioning Rosa Parks
Whenever I see an auction for civil-rights era keepsakes, such as the personal affects of Rosa Parks, it makes me uneasy. It cheapens the legacy of whatever deed was done by that individual when you reduce it to memorabilia. It feels like someone’s side-hustle, and I don’t dig that. Get a job. Don’t go selling…
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Papal Doublespeak Puts Millions of Black Lives At Risk
Pope Benedict XVI apparently sees grace in ignorance. Today, he used the opening moments of his first trip to Africa to reiterate the Church’s opposition to condom use. Feels crazy just to type that out. Even worse when it’s being trotted around a continent with more than 22 million people already HIV positive, not to…
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Outrageous AIG Provokes Americans
Outraged at AIG? Take your spot in line. While you’re there, gawk at all of your esteemed company. First you’ll find both aisles of Congress—“This is an outrage,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will be repeating over and over again to Barney Frank, who will be murmuring about misbehavior and abuse of the system. Further…
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Bashir: Reinventing the Remix
THE BUZZ points out this piece of news from Darfur, which sets my head shaking: In a speech to thousands of Sudanese security forces on Monday, al-Bashir said he had ordered Sudanese aid groups to take over the distribution of all relief inside the country. “We need to clear our country of any spies,” he…
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Bracketeering for Fun and for Profit
The annual onslaught of March Madness, aka the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, always reminds me of when my alma mater almost made it to the postseason. It was 30 years ago, and in the final game of the season, our school needed to beat our archrival to have hope for a spot in the NIT.…
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Does Bilingual Education Help or Hurt?
Today marks the second full week of a very interesting NEW YORK TIMES feature on immigration. The ambitious project, part of the paper’s “Room for Debate” blog, warehouses a lot of really important data including past articles, cool maps that let you toggle back in time to see where different ethnic groups settled (check 1910)…
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St. Paddy's Day – Not For Me
New York City shuts down on St. Patrick’s Day. So does Boston, San Francisco, Milwaukee… the list of cities goes on and on. When the Irish celebrate their heritage there’s no holding back. And I mean the liquor, the beer, the puke and the piss. Excuse the descriptions, but I’m just trying to be real. …
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Who Was Leanita McClain?
Years ago, I sat in my public-policy journalism class when a professor circulated a 25-year-old essay that ran in the Washington Post. None of my mostly white peers could read beyond the provocative headline: “How Chicago Taught Me to Hate Whites.” Only I, the lone black student in the classroom at Northwestern in the late…
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Losing Our Religion?
Back in the day, saints sang “Gimme that ole time religion.” But now a larger percentage of blacks are saying, “No thanks.” Unlike grandma and grandpa, who built their lives on deep religious faith, Bible study, prayer meetings and consistent church attendance, more black Americans—now 11 percent—say they have no religion at all. They are…
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Are Immigrants Being Treated Unfairly?
Much of the discussion about the role the recession has played on immigrants is centered on illegal immigrants and what roles they play in the job market. For those immigrants who are documented workers, not enough has been said about how they are coping with job losses and how the laws of the land only…