Dr. Anthony Asadullah Samad, PhD

A great woman passed away this week. Congresswoman Juanita Millander-McDonald. She was a living example that if you stand for right and walk in faith, God will elevate you to places beyond your expectations. This woman was an advocate for the oppressed and underserved in the truest sense of the word. I’m not talking about…

The door of intolerance to racially offensive commentary shut pretty quickly on Don Imus last week. As quickly as he piled to his producer’s “tough hoes” comments with a “nappy headed hoes” follow-up, activists and opinion leaders piled on with a feeding frenzy, reminiscent of a hog call at dinner time. Imus was mush by…

It’s open season on Black sensibilities. People think they can just say anything to, or about, Black people. Certainly, its a function of hearing Black people say anything about themselves. It’s like the ole’ saying back in the day, when you were in junior high school, and somebody called your younger brother or sister out…

Last week I wrote a commentary on the problems Black’s can’t escape. The problems are largely socio-political in scope, some self-perpetuating while others are perpetuated by historical disparities. The inference that the problems of Black America were incalculable and inescapable was not lost on many of you (who responded in-kind through a bombardment of e-mails)…

The more the African American community tries to analyze how to pull itself up from the grips of despair, the more it opens itself up to greater criticism. It’s is more difficult to have a public conversation without those who either exploit black crisis or enjoy commenting on the state of the black crisis, as…

“Big Brother” looking over your shoulder is literally in the here and now in the United States. Many are asking the question, “Are there any privacy rights in America any more?” When George Orwell wrote the book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, in 1949, in the midst of the emerging McCarthyism (the purging of Communist sympathizers in the…

The world we live in is full of lies. Lies about war. Lies about peace. Lies about wealth and abundance. Lies about poverty. We seem to turn our heads at the slightest deviations to the social norm. What society says is okay, we say is okay. What society says is wrong, we chime right in.…

The City of Los Angeles is still trying to figure out its violence problem. The Mayor of Los Angeles has gone to Washington (twice) to seek more federal funds—gone to Sacramento to get the Govenator to help him terminate violence in Los Angeles. The request? More money for more cops. Every time L.A. is put…