Browsing: Opinions

     The mid-term election in 2022 will be extremely important to Black people, and people of color in America. Voting is our voice, and voting is power. But in 2022 voting has become a popularity contest, and there appears to be fewer forums about platforms and issues.

Everybody is an Expert

The Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has effectively ended the constitutional right to an abortion—returning the issue to states. African American women, particularly the poor, will be disproportionately impacted by the lack of access to reproductive choices. As Black Christians, we are yet again confronted with the religious mandates and reading of scripture that undermines our humanity. Bodily autonomy, privacy, states’ rights, religion and the never-ending struggle against white supremacy in the United States are at the heart of the SCOTUS ruling. These issues are not new but historic in nature. The end of Roe v. Wade as the law of the land is part and parcel of a broader conservative agenda.

     America’s society is currently under siege by a strain of insanity which seemed to have gone viral with the election of the former 45th president of the United States. During his reign as president, having infected members of the Republican Party and their base with his strain of insanity, the U.S. Constitution became as credible as a dead sea scroll. If insanity is defined as “one who jumps out of a plane without a parachute,” then certainly “one who knows he lost but believes he won and attempts a coup must be insane.

Editor’s note: This commentary is provided by the Medical Marijuana Education and Research Initiative (MMERI) of Florida A&M University.

Cause and Effect: Citizen Complacency = Fatal Consequences

     The struggle of systemic racism in 2022 has intensified, and many Americans refuse to discuss the threat to voting rights, civil rights, and human rights. As millions of Americans spend hours glued to their television and cell phones watching the January 6th hearing, we almost lost our democracy, because of racism, discrimination, and criminality. There are 5 Proud Boys and 10 Oath Keepers who have been charged with seditious conspiracy.

Joe Biden Needs To Go

         “His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice” was written by Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa. It draws on the reporting of their colleagues and on intimate interviews with Floyd’s family, romantic partners, and circle of friends.

Those seeking to deny basic rights rarely stop halfway. States are already proposing to legally sanction trips to other states for abortions. The enactment of these laws—which I believe to be blatantly unconstitutional, but do not trust the current Supreme Court to agree—would force women to choose between living in certain states and access to legal abortion anywhere. Given that nearly one in four American women have an abortion in their lifetimes, I fear deaths and horrific outcomes to many pregnancies and maybe another Great Migration.