Readers of Ben Jealous’s newest book – ‘Never Forget Our People Were Always Free – A Parable of American Healing’ – will grapple with its title’s meaning through the cumulative and very personal American experience of being, at some point, the outsider. And though now no longer uncommon to hear race referred to as an artificial social construct, we remain bound by simplistically crude dichotomies – White and Black as but one example. Jealous dissects and exposes aspects of our country’s variegated genetic history that continue to result in disastrous assumptions about the nature and identities of perpetrators of heinous deeds.
Browsing: Opinions
At the end of the 19th century, my maternal great-great-grandfather, who had been born into slavery, helped build a political party called the Readjusters that took control of the state of Virginia. Here’s what got my attention – it was a multi-racial populist party led by a former Confederate general and a freedman that was pro-workers’ rights, pro-civil rights, pro-voting rights, and pro-public education.
By Mohammed Khaku The Washington Post has no “moral integrity” and has failed miserably in publishing the piece by Wa’el. The damage this reckless editorial…
As native-born Floridians, graduates of Bethune-Cookman University, inheritors and custodians of the legacy of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, and in the absence of our beloved founder to express her own opinions about the importance of African American history, we write to encourage every leader and citizen in the state of Florida to double down and resist any notion of eliminating the indispensable role of people of African descent in Florida’s education curriculum at any level. In the legacy of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, we employ all the citizens of Florida to rise up to help their leaders garner respect for the uses of their power.
Only in America does the lunacy of white supremacists permeate society as well as the Florida Legislature. Recently, Republican state Rep. Chuck Brannan during a press conference boasted, “Our right to bear arms of course is enshrined in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.” Thus, he’s vowed to file a bill to continue advancing Second Amendment freedom through a bill entitled, “Constitutional Carry.”
Trouble Man
The racial divisions that have split our country for centuries don’t just live in people’s hearts and heads. Some of them exist in concrete and pavement running right through certain neighborhoods. They are structural racism in the most tangible sense.
The pandemic of mass shootings, law enforcement violence, individual violence, domestic violence and suicide in America, is making it plain that the United States of America must lead the world in changing the culture of violence. Since 2012, Black Women for Positive Change, a multi-cultural, inter-generational, inter-faith network of Women and Good Brothers, has sponsored 11 annual Days/Weeks/Months of Non-Violence.
The audacity of the Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, to decry that African Americans Studies and (by extension) his African American constituents don’t have value. Well thankfully, we are not defined by who people say we are, but by what we say we are. So, what are we telling ourselves?
February 14 marks five years since 17 innocent lives were taken at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Our hearts remain heavy as we remember the victims of the senseless tragedy and offer condolences to all who continue to grieve. Yet, while the pain will never fully heal, we find solace in knowing their legacies live on through meaningful reforms and action.