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In the last couple of years our country has elected our first black president, and witnessed the appointments of our first Latina Supreme court justice and our first openly gay White House Social Secretary. After centuries marked by slavery, segregation and other forms of legalized inequality it seemed as though our country was finally headed in a direction in which fewer groups would feel the need to request federal civil rights protection simply to survive. But recently progress was tapped on the shoulder by our friend, cold, hard reality and told, “Not so fast.”
Last week Representative Hank Johnson introduced legislation that would add another group to those already protected by the 1964 Civil Rights Act: the unemployed. The Fair Employment Act of 2011 would make discrimination against the unemployed a civil rights violation, on par with discrimination on the basis of race or gender.
The reason? Because just as some signs outside of restaurants, stores and job postings used to declare “No Coloreds Allowed,” some employers are now declaring, “No Unemployed Allowed.” (Click here to see a list of current

When I first read the play “Fences” by August Wilson, it was 1993 and I had been given a second book contract to write a companion volume to my first book, “I Know What the Red Clay Looks.” The companion volume would be with black men writers, and I gave it the title “Swing Low” — an homage to the Negro spiritual, of course, but also because at that time, I very much thought about black maleness as the missing quantity in my life (I was adopted by a white family at birth, and reunited with my white birthmother when I was 11). When I thought of what that missing quantity might sound like, what I heard was a dark, honeyed hum — a chariot chorus in the distance, coming to carry me home to the black identity I was still then creating.
“Fences,” the title being a central metaphor throughout the play for walls and difficult choices, integrity and conviction, tells the story of a black family in 1950s Pittsburg led by patriarch Troy Maxson, a tragic hero whose life of highs and lows can perhaps best be summed up in this passage, with Troy trying to explain himself to his wife:
It’s an extraordinary passage, a phenomenal piece of writing, but the reason I was so moved by it back then was because at the time, I was involved with a black man about whom I desperately needed to believe was a kind of modern day Troy Maxson — his infidelities and shortcomings assuaged by his raw charm and charisma, his unapologetic black manliness in a cruel world of racial disparity. Coincidentally, right around that same time, I met my birthfather, my sole (then) living black relative, who had been described to me by my birthmother only once and like this: “Basically, he was a dog.”
Sitting across from me at the Au Bon Pain in Cambridge, Mass., not far from the Salvation Army where he was then living, my birthfather did not really send out a “dog” type vibe. His potbelly tested the zipper of his natty red nylon tracksuit, as his forehead gleamed with sweat and his eyes fell swollen and

(This article was published in “The Louisiana Weekly” in the March 7, 2011 edition.)
If Saturdays find you in an easy chair with a magazine–weary from the workweek–when you should be outside weeding the garden, you’re not alone. New Orleans residents are less physically active in their leisure time than Americans in the West and parts of the North and Northeast, according to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released in mid February.
The CDC found that American adults were inactive for anywhere between 10.1% and 43% of their free time in 2008. Counties in the southern U.S. and parts of Appalachia were the most inert, while those in the West and the Rockies were peppiest.
Along with Louisiana, residents of Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Tennessee were least likely to exert themselves in their down time.
In Louisiana’s Orleans Parish, 28.1% of adults were physically inactive during their leisure time in 2008, the CDC

I was amazed when I found out about the oldest and only African American Firefighter Museum in the country, which is right in Los Angeles!
The museum preserves and shares the great accomplishments of African American firefighters throughout the decades. It opened on December 13, 1997 to acknowledge and praise the service of the first 100 years of service by African American Firefighters.
The history and the memory of those who helped start the museum are also preserved. It is something that is so striking and breathtaking that it truly makes you appreciate the past, the present, and the future to

Where does the Black-White gap in support for marriage rights come from?
The Washington Post details the last-ditch efforts by Black Christian leaders in Prince George’s County, Maryland to stop the state from legalizing homogamous marriage.
The county, just outside Washington, D.C., is “the nation’s most affluent and best-educated majority-black jurisdiction, [and] home to some of the largest and most influential churches in the nation.” That makes it ground zero for Black Christian opposition to homogamous marriage rights.
One church official, Paul Wells from theNew Revival Center of Renewal (“A ministry to the homeless and formerly incarcerated”), is quoted as saying:
A recent article by Darren Sherkat and colleagues in the journal Social Science Quarterly explored the religious basis for Black opposition to gay and lesbian marriage. (In 2008, 58% of Black respondents to the General Social Survey opposed same-sex marriage rights, compared with 46% of Whites.) They show that what appears to many as an incongruity in the overlap between Black political liberalism and widespread opposition to marriage rights is largely explained by religion — sectarian affiliation and level of religiosity. From the conclusion:
The Post article offers an illustration of this pattern. The conservative Christian opposition doesn’t represent all of Black political opinion:
Baltimore’s black lawmakers have generally been more likely to support the same-sex marriage

I’m watching African American Lives on PBS, a documentary featuring the ancestry of prominent African Americans. The show features famous entertainers like Chris Rock and Tina Turner and prominent business and community leaders. Usually, when people look up their ancestors it’s a happy occasion to learn where you came from and who you’re related too. This is not so if you were born black in

When I was a college student, I worked at the student newspaper. I was a longhaired, hard-drinking journalist — a Woodward and/or Bernstein in training — who would someday expose wrongdoers and bring down corrupt powerbrokers.
Well, at least that’s how I saw myself back then. It didn’t quite work out that way. And it’s not just because my chosen field, print journalism, soon became as relevant as the telegraph.
In truth, I got soured on the crusading-reporter thing pretty

Americans who ditch retail banking due to higher fees this year might look for inspiration to a surprising group: low-income African American women with kids and no college.
Last month, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon made headlines when he estimated that roughly five percent of today’s banking customers may be pushed out of the retail banking system by banks that charge higher fees in response to recent regulations. Last week, Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit echoed

First initiated as Negro History Week in 1926 by the black historian Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History to remedy the wide-spread ignorance, neglect and distortion of African-American history due to racism, the observance was extended to a month in 1976 (and every year since) by Presidential Proclamation. Groups, like persons, have memories that serve to preserve their identities as groups. Our nation, constituted by diverse ethnic, racial, and religious groups achieves a unified identity, not only through a set of shared principles articulated in civic institutions, but through

The Museum of the City of New York, located at the top of Museum Mile on Fifth Avenue in New York City, presents lively exhibitions and public programs that explore and interpret the city’s past, and celebrate New York’s heritage of diversity, opportunity, and perpetual transformation.
Among its vast holdings, the Museum is the steward of more than a quarter of a million photographs depicting New York City and its inhabitants from the advent of photography forward. Before photography was recognized by other museums as an important art form, an early, visionary curator, Grace Mayer, began collecting photographers’ work for its documentary value.
There are countless stories in these images; the movement of the African American community within Manhattan is just one of them.

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The following is the second in a series of celebrity roots profiles from the first season of NBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? The previous profile can be found here:
Lisa Kudrow
Emmitt Smith
Emmitt James Smith III grew up wanting to be a Dallas Cowboy, but he far exceeded that aspiration. As the NFL’s all-time rushing leader, he can look back on accomplishments ranging from three Super Bowl victories to a Dancing with the Stars championship. A devoted family man and devout Christian, Emmitt lives in Texas with his wife, Pat, and their four children.
Years of focusing on his career meant that Emmitt missed out on many family

Two new federal government reports — neither of which got a lot of press — suggest continuing trouble in the housing market, meaning continuing trouble for the economy. And, in a pattern we’ve seen so often that it’s ceased to be surprising, communities of color are faring the worst.
According to U.S. Census data released this week, homeownership rates have dropped to their lowest level since 1998. Homeownership rates for Hispanics and African Americans have dropped nearly twice as much as for whites (2010 data for Asian Americans and Native Americans have not yet been reported).
The census report was released almost simultaneously with a White House release of data from the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) showing that only 472,619 homeowners have received permanent loan modifications in the past year.
These two reports neatly summarize a dangerous

There’s been a lot of discussion (bordering on hysteria) in recent years regarding the role African-Americans could play in helping conservatives stem the growing tide in favor of gay rights. And yet progressives have seemed largely oblivious to another issue in which conservatives might find willing allies in the black community: abortion.
When I first heard that GOP Rep. Chris Smith was introducing a bill to redefine the rape exemption allowed for Medicaid coverage of abortions to include only “forcible rape,” my first thought was, “Does he mean forcible rape as opposed to consensual rape?” My second thought was, “What exactly is consensual rape?” (According to

I attended two events over the past weekend that, in very different ways, made me think of Oprah Winfrey (who is on the minds of many of us inside and outside the adoption world of late).
On Friday and Saturday, I participated in a national conference at Harvard University that focused on ideas to help the high number of African American children in our country’s foster care system. The conference didn’t address adoption much, but some speakers talked about the importance of children and youth maintaining biological ties, others touched on identity issues, and yet others broached the impact on parents and siblings of separating children from their families of origin. Those are all big, universal themes that affect tens of millions of Americans to varying degrees at various times of their lives. And, of course, they’re all significant concerns within the adoption community.
For a couple of hours in the middle of Saturday, I excused myself from the brain-straining conversation at Harvard to attend to a matter of the heart: I crossed the street in Cambridge to join a packed room of people paying tribute to

Last week, Martin Luther King tributes were taking place across the nation. And the spirit of MLK and the courageous acts of our foremothers and forefathers of the civil rights movement are etched indelibly in many of our hearts.
But the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King’s era of the 1960′s, many would say, is dying a slow and necessary death.
And for many African-Americans of younger generations, who are now the beneficiaries of the racial gains from the Movement, feeling the Movement’s’ slow death is like a welcoming boulder gradually being lifted from their shoulders, especially for those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer.
With many key African-American organizations and institutions of the civil rights movement of the 1960s still resistant to address this generation’s outwardness about their sexual orientations and gender expressions as a civil rights issues, these organizations and institutions have not only lost their mantle as part of a prophetic justice movement for this day and age, but many of our present day key African American organizations and institutions of the Movement have also lost the moral high ground that was once so easily associated with them.
For example, the bedrock institution in the African-American community, we all know by now, is the Black church. And it was also the bedrock of the civil rights movement. In March of 2010, Princeton’s Eddie Glaude

Growing up, my family felt unusual empathy with black people. Because my mother worked as a public health nurse’s aide, we got to know her black professional nursing friends. I also grew watching incomprehensible brutality against well-behaved black people in the South on TV.
My parents had been direct victims of discrimination when they were younger. Even in my generation, attending schools dominated by members of other ethnic groups, I experienced more subtle forms of discrimination, including degrading ethnic jokes from some classmates.
I spent 30 years at Pitney Bowes, 11 as CEO, because Pitney Bowes welcomed all kinds of

As the holiday season slips into memory the public sector squeeze is on. We are into the shorter, colder days of winter. The American public sector is struggling through a long, cold season. Yes, the economy has made up some of the ground lost in 2008 and

Had the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., survived the struggles of the civil rights movement and gone on to lead a long, healthy life, he would be waking up this weekend to his eighty-second birthday. Instead, we have a national holiday in his name, and we celebrate his memory.
Keeping that memory alive will always be important to me. It is important to me just as it ought to be to any other African-American — to any other American, period, really. But it is especially important to me because it takes me back to so many things I learned at the dinner table as a child.
Yes, we actually used to sit around the dinner table as a family — both parents and four children — and we would talk about the issues of the

As Americans we have a hard time talking about race in this country when the n-word is not involved. And when this epithet is, predictably, we behave schizophrenically.
And much of the kerfuffle is about who’s staking a claim on its use.
The now recent kerfuffle concerning the n-word is focused on Samuel Langhorne Clemens’, known fondly to us as Mark Twain, New South Books edition of the 1885 controversial classic “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
In a combined effort to rekindle interest in this Twain classic and to tamp down the flame and fury the use of the n-word engenders both from society and readers alike, who come across the epithet 219 times in the book, Mark Twain Scholar, Alan Gribben, an English professor at Auburn University in Alabama, proposed the idea that the n-word be replaced with the word “slave.”
“The n-word possessed, then as now, demeaning implications more vile than almost any insult that can be applied to other racial groups. There is no equivalent slur in the English language. As a result, with every passing decade this affront appears to gain rather than lose its

Originally posted in AtlantaPost.com
Unless you’re plugged into the feeds of international news organizations or you get your news directly from the WikiLeaks site, you wouldn’t know that many of the WikiLeaks cables delve deeply into issues which impact the continent of Africa and other brown and black countries. You wouldn’t know because the brown and black mouthpieces responsible for connecting the dots have been, by and large, silent.
In the last several weeks, we’ve learned that the cables reveal that the Saudi government believes that Hezbollah is setting up bases in Africa and that China is operating on the continent in partnership with ‘unsavory’ regimes. No surprises here. Africa has become a veritable wasteland to an array of world leaders for whom the road to economic dominance meanders through Africa’s limitless pool of slave labor and mineral-rich resources.
It is also no surprise that, as usual, the global community doesn’t give a rat’s behind about the plight of the dark continent or its

Co-authored by R.J. Ellis
The more we discover about Harriet E. Wilson, the author of the first novel published in the United States by an African-American woman, the more startling her life becomes. Wilson — born a free Negro in Milford, N.H., in the 1820s but doomed to serve a very harsh period as an indentured servant with the white Hayward family — boldly captured the racism that she experienced in New England in her pioneering autobiographical 1859 novel, Our Nig; or, Sketches From the Life of a Free Black.
As Gabrielle Foreman and Kathy Flynn have shown, between 1857 and 1861 Wilson became an enterprising producer and marketer of

I say this because Arizona is not the problem. We the people are the problem.
That is, we Americans who think it is cool to engage in rhetoric, political or otherwise, that encourages division, ugliness, hatred, and violence, directly or indirectly.
Over the past several years, we’ve witnessed this madness via certain television networks, TV and radio talk shows, the Internet, and various rallies and protests: a climate of hatred and, yes, violence, which has been boiling with a quickness in our America.
This is not about left versus right political philosophies, nor Democrats versus Republicans, nor progressives versus Tea Party followers, nor about the wackness of Arizona, a state that once, aided by one of its senators, John McCain, refused to celebrate the

Immediately following Christmas this year will mark Kwanzaa’s forty-third anniversary. From Dec. 26 through Jan. 1, millions of African Americans, like myself, will start their week-long celebration by greeting families and friends with the Swahili term “Harbari gani!” which means “What’s happening!” Much of what will be happening will be talk about whether the commercialization and takeover by larger retailers of this holiday celebration violates the seven principles (the Nguzo Saba) of Kwanzaa.
Kwanzaa, which means “the first fruits of the harvest,” was founded in 1967 by Dr. Maulana “Ron” Karenga, then chairman of the African American Studies department at California State University at Long Beach. Thought to be a black version of Christmas, Kwanzaa is neither a religious holiday nor a substitute for Christmas. It is a spiritual and cultural holiday whose seven principles of unity (umoja) , self-determination (kujichagulia), collective work and responsibility (ujima), cooperative economics (ujamma) , purpose (nia), creativity (kuumba) and faith (imani) represent and reaffirm traditional African American values that extends to all Americans.
The practice of black economic power and self-reliance have kept the holiday of Kwanzaa financially afloat. Unlike Christmas, which is characterized by rampant commercialism and the accumulation of material objects, Kwanzaa’s emphasis is on human relationships and on the spiritual ties and responsibilities that African Americans first have to one another, and then to the larger society.
However, gifts, called zawadi, do play an important role during Kwanzaa. Gifts exchanged are either handmade or purchased from African American vendors in keeping with the fourth principle of Kwanzaa known as cooperative economics.
As a small but thriving business, Kwanzaa keeps black dollars afloat longer in African American enclaves across the country than any other national holiday. Because its products, like the kinara (the candle holder for seven candles, one black, three red and three green), the Kikombe Cha Umoja (communal unity cup), the Mkeka (place mat) and the bendea (the African American national flag) can only be found in neighborhood Afrocentric curio shops, African American consumers shop there instead of outside their communities. On the whole, these small African and African American owned businesses profit modestly from Kwanzaa items because they are sold only in abundance during a specific time of the year.
Because African American businesses in this country are plagued with financial instability due to racial and economic disparities, the commercial spread of Kwanzaa in stores like Target and Wal-Mart would keep the Kwanzaa dollars afloat, many argue, but these small African American businesses would not financially profit from this sort of commercial popularity; albeit it would be another acknowledgment of African Americans’ unique contribution to the larger U.S. economy.
With the majority of black dollars already floating out of the community and into store chains like Target and Wal-Mart, we would see the rapid displacement of small African and African American owned businesses. And these store chains vie aggressively for our dollars by tracking our spending habits.
In the Sept. 2005 issue of USA Today, an article on African American spending habits reported that according to Target Market, a company that tracks black consumer spending, African Americans not only spend their dollars outside of their communities as fast as they make them but African Americans also spend a significant amount of their income on depreciable products that come at the expense of a financially solvent future for us individually and collectively as a people.
In watching how the dollar trail leaves small community owned businesses and pours into huge conglomerate store chains, how do any of the small businesses across the country survive against these corporate Goliaths?
And if Kwanzaa, in particular, goes corporate, can it still maintain its unique character and not lose its soul?
Overwhelmingly, most African Americans say no because corporate accountability has too often been overridden by profit. And an example of the corporate exploitation of Kwanzaa was exhibited during the dedication ceremonies which unveiled the Kwanzaa stamp in 1997. As widespread acceptance of the Kwanzaa stamp took hold in the marketplace, so too did the corporate takeover of Kwanzaa with companies buying licensing rights from the United Stated Postal Service to use the stamp. Prepaid phone cards, lapel pins, book markers and greeting cards with the Kwanzaa stamp logo on them were all made in China.
The shifting of labor, profit, and control of the Kwanzaa image out of black hands and into corporate coffers is just merely one phase of a corporate takeover where merger trumps morals.
This Kwanzaa holiday, I’ll head out to the neighborhood store to purchase my red, black and green candles for the kinara, because I know that the strength of the U.S. economy is found in its multicultural small community owned businesses that reflect our nation’s diversity. And in so doing, I would also be honoring the fourth principle of Kwanzaa which is cooperative economics.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has been repealed (once President Obama signs the bill). Finally. We are a better, stronger, safer country than we were before the vote. But let’s not break our arms patting ourselves on the back.
Why am I so grumpy? No, it’s not because I’m Scrooge. (By the way, Happy Holidays to everyone, and yes, I do mean “Happy Holidays.” Unlike the systematic discrimination against gays and lesbians allowed by Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, I prefer to be sensitive to the fact that not everyone celebrates any given holiday in December. So let the “War on Christmas” bull begin.)
I’m grumpy because the positive aspects of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal pale in comparison to the problems that still surround the larger issue of how we treat gays and lesbians, especially when you consider how long it took for the repeal to arrive, and how much garbage had to be endured to get there.
Even with the repeal, it seems like it’s still acceptable in some circles to openly disparage gays and lesbians, in a way that would not be tolerated with religious, ethnic or racial groups. For example, John McCain, in defending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, said,
What if McCain legitimized the choice of not wanting to serve with African Americans? Or Jews? Or Latinos? Would his statement be deemed acceptable? Of course not. He would have been the subject of widespread condemination. So why is it okay with gays and lesbians? It’s not. The only difference is that we, as a society, allow bigotry against gays and lesbians that we once allowed against African Americans, Jews and other minorities.
(Not to mention that the troops said in a survey that they didn’t mind serving alongside openly gay colleagues.)
I’ve been doing a lot of reading in the last few months about the first half of the 20th century, especially the period from the early 1930s to the late 1950s. Obviously, there is a lot to be proud of during that era, especially how the country mobilized to win World War II. But the era also featured some shameful and mind-blowing actions by the U.S. and its citizens that make you wonder how we didn’t learn our lesson about oppressing a minority people. From sending Japanese Americans to internment camps to the outrageous mistreatment of African Americans, especially those serving our country in the armed forces, we did things that would make even the modern day Tea Party blush (well, maybe not … we have our birthers).
So why are we allowing oppression now with gays and lesbians? We have public debates over gay marriage in the way we once argued over miscegenation. The bullying of gay teens also has echoes in past treatment of minorities in this country.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell seems to follow our pattern: We get where we should be, but only after condoning shameful behavior for too long. (Tell me you can’t imagine a teenager in 2050, struggling to comprehend what he is hearing, saying to his father, “Wait, we kicked qualified people out of the armed forces while we were in two wars because they were gay? Are you kidding me? Why?” Just as a teenager today would not be able to understand that African Americans were not only separated from white soldiers during World War II, but were often treated worse than some German prisoners of war, for example, in being denied access to food and entertainment enjoyed by whites.)
It’s telling that when I expressed my sentiments about the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal on my Facebook page, a commenter wrote that it was nice to see such a response coming from someone who is straight. I completely understand her reaction, but it’s a shame that she had to feel that way. Gay or straight, every American who cares about the basic American value of equal treatment under the law should oppose the oppression of any minority, whether a member of that group or not.
We may have won the battle over Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but it seems to me there is a lot left to do on the bigger question of how we, as a country, treat people we perceive as different.
I think a big part of the problem is the right-wing propaganda machine, which creates an environment in which intolerance can flourish. In my reading about the 1930s, I was struck by how the era had its version of both Rush Limbaugh (the hateful, racist, anti-Semitic Father Charles Coughlin) and Glenn Beck (the snake oil salesman turned snake oil salesman/radio mogul John Brinkley). (Bruce Lenthall’s “Radio’s America: The Great Depression and the Rise of the Mass Culture” has a great chapter on Coughlin and Brinkley.) It occurred to me that while the popularity of these divisive figures eventually waned, it might have been different if they had the support of an organized, right-wing propaganda infrastructure as exists today. (By now, you’ve all probably read the study that shows that Fox News is successful in meeting its goal of disseminating misinformation, as its viewers are epically uninformed on the facts of the day. Similarly, Paul Krugman’s column on Friday noted that the Republicans on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission voted to exclude the terms “deregulation,” “shadow banking,” “interconnection,” and “Wall Street” from the commission’s report, insisting on the inclusion of “facts” that are not, in fact, true. More evidence that the right wing has successfully built a structure of its own “facts” that are at odds with reality.)
So you’ll forgive me if I’m not risking spraining my ankle jumping for joy over a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal that is 17 years too late (it should have never been adopted) and took overcoming GOP filibusters and entrenched opposition to be achieved. (I hope you can handle the fact that McCain thinks it was a “sad day,” even as he once supported the repeal if the military leaders supported it, which they now do.)
To me, the story isn’t how enlightened we are to allow gay and lesbian Americans to serve their country, but rather how, yet again, we were slow to stop oppressing a group because its members are perceived as different. And we continue to allow mistreatment of gays and lesbians in a way that would be viewed as unacceptable for racial, religious and ethnic minorities. It reminds me that we seemed to learn nothing from our abhorrent institutional treatment of African Americans, Japanese-Americans and others in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.
I’m overjoyed that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is dead. But I can’t help but find more bad than good associated with its repeal.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com