15 Articles

Saturday, June 20, 2009
Note to O'Reilly: Women Deserve Protections-Fetuses Don't
(5 comments) The woman's rights/pro-choice crowd needs to stop accepting the right-wing frame for this debate. When asked if fetuses deserve rights, the answer is: Women deserve rights-including protection from people who would force them to use their bodies in ways they know to be harmful to their well being, their loved ones, and their lives.

Monday, January 19, 2009
At Obama's Rise, Praise King's Movement, and Bury It
(1 comments) The fact of being a half-black man raised exclusively by whites and often in brown-skinned, culturally unique environments (Indonesia, Hawaii) helped Barack Obama win the Presidency. This strange background also prevents him from acting as a direct model for most American blacks. We don't have white parents and guardians or non-American fathers. However, we can adapt his model to suit our needs.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Blacks, Gays and the Myth of the Saintly Oppressed
(6 comments) Underlying the black/gay divide in the post-Prop. 8 world was the illusion that minorities minorities are somehow naturally predisposed or sociologically obligated to display fewer negative human traits than straight white men. But that's a gross, convenient myth. Oppression does not enlighten. It degrades.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008
America Can't Handle the Truth; But it's Coming Anyway
(22 comments) With the economy in freefall and American livelihoods and ways of life in sincere jeopardy for the first time in a generation, much of the press and the American public aren't making the adjustment from the trivial "get rich quick" economic Bubble Years to the new pre-depression. Unfortunately, denial won't solve the problem. It just makes the fall all the more shocking.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008
A Somewhat More Visible Man
(2 comments) Rivers of black blood have been spilled. My parents and theirs fought and died to rip their rights from the majority's avaricious grasp. To justify their illegal hold, the majority belittled, dehumanized, brutalized and sometimes killed me and mine. So I have often wondered what it might mean to feel fully American. Today, I, a black descendant of African slaves, get a glimpse...

Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Black Blindness on Proposition 8
(2 comments) According to a SurveyUSA poll, 58% of black voters support Proposition 8, which would enshrine irrational fear and rank bigotry into the California Constitution in order to deny gays the right to marry. Black support is 10% higher than support of any other ethnic group. This is ironic, to say the least.

Monday, September 22, 2008
The Elephants Among Us Chickens
(1 comments) Conservatives like Andrew Sullivan and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson are starting blame homeowners believe homeowners must take "personal responsibility" for their mortgage troubles as they rescue the Masters of the Universe who netted billions from the housing bubble.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008
McCain/Palin Flash Rove's Racial Gang Signs
(2 comments) Fifty percent of this year's Republican playbook is typically divisive Rove Culture Wars. The other fifty percent is all about racial signs and symbols. By allowing the sons o' Karl Rove to tap right wing ideologue Palin as his VP, McCain has now fully assembled the un-American (read: non-white) shredder through which he hopes to shove Barack Obama.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Katrina + 3 Years: The 'Nigga' in New Orleans
Three years after Hurricane Katrina, the slow recovery and threats of yet another flood prove that some accomplishments in which the black community rightly takes great pride are so tainted by history that they are irredeemable. Parts of New Orleans, like the word "nigger," are among them.

Monday, August 18, 2008
The Evangelical Jesus Cure for Unforgivable Blackness
(1 comments) The subtext to Obama's appeals to white Evangelicals flirts with one of the oldest and most pernicious underpinnings of the idea of white supremacy. The Jesus whom black slaves were taught to worship and submit to was unquestionably white, as was God the Father who begat him.

Friday, August 15, 2008
The Shelf Life of John McCain's Honor
(7 comments) I am violently sick of the media dancing around John McCain's increasingly dishonorable conduct and the outrageous sense of entitlement with which he justifies his campaign. John McCain is a dishonorable liar who once honorably wore a uniform. To hide his lies behind his medals dishonors not only the service he claims to prize--the one my father served all of his life--but also the country he seeks to lead.

Sunday, August 3, 2008
If Race is Not Welcome, are Blacks?
(1 comments) If race, its place in American history and the American present are all unwelcome topics, it only stands to reason that the people at whom the word "race" is most often focused--Afro-Americans--are equally objectionable. We are, after all, the reason that the caged beast exists. Our very skin is the source of all of that discomfort.

Sunday, July 20, 2008
Hillary Clinton: The Most Significant Choice for VP
(1 comments) Picking Hillary Clinton for his VP would say more about who Obama is and where he'd lead America than just about any other gesture.

Friday, July 4, 2008
David Broder's Twisted 4th of July
David Broder discusses a report on the state of American identity and American ideals. He takes solace in the past, but willfully ignores the warning signs surrounding us right now.

Monday, June 30, 2008
The African American Patrotism Quandary
Patriotism is more complex for African Americans. That's why some require irrefutable patriotism proofs from black politicians that they do not demand of white ones. For blacks, "love" just may not be the right word to proceed the word "America."