Commentary

Blacks in the White House

Wednesday, 01 September 2010 16:23 William Reed

America’s first “Black President” could teach Barack Obama about reaching out to Black Americans. Unlike Bill Clinton & Crew, Obama and his advisors lack the central African-American experience needed to understand and engage Black Americans.

Obama’s failure or refusal to communicate with Blacks continues questions of his relative blackness. Discussions and debates among Blacks over “how effective he is” have amplified. Barack may be more white on the inside than he is Black. Surely, the people around him are. House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn says Obama “needs some Black people around him.” Clyburn says Obama’s inner circle keeps “screwing up” on race: “Some people over there are not sensitive at all about race. They really feel that the extent to which he allows himself to talk about race would tend to cost him support”.

Katrina, Five Years Later

Tuesday, 31 August 2010 16:06 Marian Wright Edelman

I have a dream that I can go back to my home, that I can go back to New Orleans.
I have a dream, a dream filled with hopes.
I hope my daddy is safe.
I hope we can have a clean New Orleans again, that New Orleans can go back to the way it was.
I hope that all the people will be safe and protected.

I Have A Dream

Katrina revealed race and poverty

Monday, 30 August 2010 17:57 Gary L. Flowers  - NNPA Columnist

(NNPA) – The Black Leadership Forum, led by the Hip Hop Caucus, returned to New Orleans last Sunday, August 29 —the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina—to raise righteous voices of indignation for the right of return and the rebuilding of housing for the poor. 

As much as the Emmit Till murder did 55 years ago, Hurricane Katrina pulled back the cultural curtains and revealed the intersecting roads of race and poverty in the United States of America. In both cases, America’s egalitarian myth of civility to all her citizens was shattered by the photo of Till’s open casket in Chicago (Jet Magazine) and news images (CNN) of African Americans treated as animals and “refugees” in New Orleans. Before and after Hurricane Katrina the City of New Orleans has been a case study in the oppressive confluence of race and poverty on African Americans. Prior to Katrina, New Orleans had the highest percentage of public housing residents in the nation, many of who were allowed to live poorly policed, sub-standard living conditions.

"Black power": Not yet

Thursday, 26 August 2010 13:39 William Reed

“Politics without economics is symbol without substance” - Minister Louis Farrakhan

August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. The landmark legislation outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S. But, 45 years after the legislation Blacks nor their vote have attained “Black Power”.

Tea Party, Fox News hoodwink America

Monday, 23 August 2010 19:23 Shirley Sherrod

Back in March, I delivered a speech to an NAACP Freedom Fund banquet in my home state of Georgia. I drew on my personal life story to urge poor people, white and black, to pull together and overcome racial divisions. We have to understand that our struggle is against poverty and against those who are blocking our path out of poverty.  

Unless we figure this out, I warned, our communities won't thrive and our children won't prosper.

As you know, a Tea Party blogger named Andrew Breitbart released an intentionally deceptive, heavily edited clip from that speech to make it look as if I was delivering exactly the opposite message.

Then Fox News blasted that false message across America's airwaves, creating a firestorm that led to my ouster as the USDA State Director here in Georgia.  

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