Category: Guest Commentary

Black leaders are calling on the entertainment industry to stop using the “N” word, a move in theory that I support wholeheartedly. Do I think that the entertainment industry gives a damn? Absolutely not, but it makes for great news clips and if one didn’t know any better they’d think we were really doing something…

Sean Bell was murdered and his two friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, were maimed by New York City cops minutes after the trio finished celebrating Bell’s marriage the next day. The three were set up by undercover cops who were looking for trouble in a bar in Queens; they were trapped in their car…

A few years ago, what people in the U.S. knew about Sudan, the largest country in Africa, likely came from the movie Lawrence of Arabia. Most had never heard of Darfur, the suffering, tumultuous region in western Sudan. Today, Darfuris are caught in a grim conflict that has killed up to 400,000 people and displaced…

There are many important issues facing our nation and the 110th Congress. Minimum wage increases and universal health care are long past due.I certainly appreciate the stirrings about bringing our troops home from Iraq within 3 or 4 months, too! After all, (sic) more troops were killed yesterday while our politicoes are playing footsies with…

Last week comedian Michael Richards fired a round of angry racial epithets at several young black men heckling him in a comedy club in Los Angeles. Just one week later, Sean Bell, a 23 year old groom-to-be and his two friends (all black) were gunned down by five plain-clothed New York City police officers who…

The racist rant heard nationwide by Michael Richards, who played the lovable and goofy character Kramer on the TV sit-com “Seinfeld,” shocked not only his fans and audience that night at the Laugh Factory in West Hollywood, but his racist rant also shocked Americans back to an ugly era in U.S. history. While it is…

As a Black activist who also happens to be a lesbian, my fight has been resolute not to mainstream homosexuality as some critics wrongly and slanderously maintain, but to promote respect for and tolerance toward those with diverse sexual preferences. Look around you. There’s no place that we go where we don’t see lesbian, gay,…

The great Afro-Puerto Rican historian and bibliophile, Arthur A. Schomburg, was absolutely right when he wrote, “History must restore what slavery took away, for it is the social damage of slavery that the present generation must repair and offset.” One thing that history can restore and that not even the savagery of slavery totally took…

Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor. On the Gulf Coast, the reverse is happening. Federal state and local governments are teaming up with corporations and developers to systematically steal hurricane relief funds from the poor to enrich themselves. Billions of dollars were given to help the communities damaged by Katrina.…

In the year 1712, a speech was given by slave owner, Willie Lynch on the banks of the James River on how to control and make a slave. He spoke of methods to use that, if used properly, “will enslave a n***er from generation to generation and for centuries to come. Take control of their…