Dr. Anthony Asadullah Samad, PhD

This week the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (the NAACP) is holding it’s 100th Anniversary convention in celebratory “high cotton” (New York) as the nation’s oldest civil rights organization of its kind. Longevity has its place. A century of struggle to meet two centuries of strife is nothing to underestimate – if…

Our hearts have been heavy for about a week now since the news broke that pop star, Michael Jackson, died suddenly from a heart attack (of some sort). Everything, and when I say everything – I mean EVERYTHING, has been bumped from the news cycle. Not just the 24 hour news cycle, or even the…

It’s been a while since I’ve been on the same page at the same time with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. As one of the few black stakeholders that backed his losing bid in 2001, and returned to support him in 2005, only to have to bash him for engaging in token reciprocity with the…

Last week, the federal government moved forth with allowing public airwaves to be transitioned from the analog transmission to the newer, advanced digital forms of communication transmission. Now understand, we all must realize that everything must change. NOTHING remains the same. The advancement of technology has changed everything about television, making them larger, thinner and…

The Superintendent of the second largest school district in the United States, Ray Cortines, recently announced that the Los Angeles Unified School District will be canceling summer school as a cost cutting remedy for the district’s $400 million dollar budget shortfall. Who thought of this bright idea? Can they (the School Board) really be serious?…

I had a déjà vu moment last week while watching Los Angeles Clippers owner, Donald Sterling, receive the Los Angeles NAACP Chapter’s Life Achievement Award. Watching Sterling try to find the words of why he merited the award was like watching George Wallace try to convince black voters that he had changed from his segregationist…

Sometimes it takes an event (or two) to make plain a reality that nobody wants to talk about. Pervasive police abuse and police misconduct are usually activities nobody wants to acknowledge and nobody wants to admit to. Police have a way of trying to convince you that everything they do is legal, even when it…

One of the first things President Barack Obama did as Chief Executive of our nation was to urge Congress to pass, than sign, the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA), better known as the nation’s “economic stimulus” package. The $787 billion dollar bill, the largest taxpayer footed bill ever passed, was viewed as the primary…