NewsTrust - Black - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

What's the matter with white people?

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Joan Walsh - Mar. 04 (Opinion) - Both the right and left suddenly have a lot of complaints about white people, particularly the so-called white working class. In “Suicide of a Superpower,” Pat Buchanan describes white Americans contemptuously at times, as an endangered species obliviously collaborating in its own demise by tolerating liberal multiculturalism. Charles Murray, the man who in the 1980s blamed government for encouraging sloth and single-parenthood in the black community, is now saying the same thing about the white lower class: they’re suffering from declining wages and higher unemployment not because of a changed economy, but because they’ve come to prefer slacking and shacking up to hard work and marriage. But white rich people are a problem, too: Murray’s book “Coming Apart: The State of White American 1960-2010″ indicts the white uber-class for refusing to impose their own traditional values, which he believes are the foundation of their economic success, on their lazy, out-of-control lessers.

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Obama's 2012 Chances and Democratic Demographic Dreaming

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Real Clear Politics - By Sean Trende - Nov. 30 (Opinion) - The latest report from Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin of the progressive Center for American Progress contains a thoughtful examination of President Obama's re-election chances. There's an awful lot packed into the 60 pages of text, but the basic thrust is

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Kerry Kennedy: Tucson, King and Kennedy

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Kerry Kennedy - Jan. 17 (Opinion) - "What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black..."

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Farai Chideya: What everyone is missing about NPR's WilliamsGate

Sat, 23 Oct 2010 17:50:09 -0700

Huffington Post - By Farai Chideya - Oct. 23 (Opinion) - The White House reached out to National Public Radio over the weekend, offering analyst Juan Williams a presidential interview to mark yesterday's 50th anniversary of school desegregation in Little Rock. But NPR turned down the interview, and Williams's

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Do blacks feel betrayed by Obama's silence on race?

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

thegrio.com - By Boyce Watkins - Jul. 25 (Opinion) - President Obama has become a racial enigma. When it comes to the black/white divide in America, Obama is believed to be everything from Clarence Thomas to Malcolm X, depending on whom you ask. The right-wing identifies Obama as a radical black man who hates white people, and the progressive black community sees Obama as yet another political sellout fresh off Harvard Yard. The "great" Bill Cosby once said, "I don't know the recipe for success. But the recipe for failure is trying to please everybody." Therefore, in Cosby's world, every high ranking black political figure, including Obama, is destined for certain failure. Whether Obama will go down as a failure or success as president has yet to be determined. I personally believe that his greatest achievement occurred when he was sworn in as the first black president in American history. Like any good marriage, things can sometimes head straight downhill after the honeymoon.

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Framing the Alabama Democratic Primary Results

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

theamericanscene.com - By Noah Millman - Jun. 03 (Opinion) - You have two candidates running in a Democratic gubernatorial primary in Alabama. One runs clearly to the right of the other. The more left-wing candidate wins, handily. You have two candidates running in a Democratic gubernatorial primary in Alabama.

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Wake Up, Tavis Smiley

Sat, 01 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Stanley Crouch - May. 01 (Opinion) - With a trailblazing African-American in the White House, why does the PBS host insist on bringing lunatics together to talk about race? There seem to be just as many loons and hustlers among Obama’s chosen ethnic group as among the fatmouthed Republicans who have sold out to the Tea Baggers. One of the best examples of this problem was witnessed last month in the Tavis Smiley rhetorical circus called "We Count! The Black Agenda Is the American Agenda," which was shown on C-SPAN and presented as a serious discussion in the spirit of Smiley’s “State of the Black Union.” With attempted gravity, Smiley once described his symposiums as exercises devoted to “critical thinking.” Not quite. No unsentimental attempt was made in any way profound enough to meet the demands of our time. Had it been, invited panelists like Louis Farrakhan and various hoodoo women no better prepared with insight than astrologers would not have been there to give the lie to the whole convoluted business. Overall, the Smiley forums presented by Smiley always had more than a whiff of minstrel show draped in militant posturing. This is accomplished by turning over the U of a coonskin smile so that it registers as a nearly constant frown. Everyone is seen as a militant. As Martin Luther King once observed, Negroes spent time listening to Malcolm X because they enjoyed hearing someone black give the white man hell. Yet they knew better than to take seriously what he was proposing—like rejecting their Christian identities, their diets, and the music and dance that had helped defined the aesthetics of American fun.

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A Minefield for Obama

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

City Limits - By Jarrett Murphy - Mar. 27 (Opinion) - The White House has refused to inject color into its depictions of the economic crisis. No surprise there: Obama's breaking the color barrier at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue hasn't given him free rein to conduct the "national conversation on race" of which he once spoke. Instead, pigment is a uniquely perilous topic for him.

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Rush Limbaugh hits racial bottom, digs

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Crunchy Con - By Rod Dreher - Sep. 16 (Opinion) - But that's not why I took down the item and the link to the video. I took it down because now we have Rush Limbaugh blaming Obama for black kids beating up a white kid on a school bus. This is what happens in "Obama's America," he said today on his

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The Destruction of the Black Middle Class

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Barbara Ehrenreich, Dedrick Muhammed - Aug. 05 (Opinion) - Left out of the commentary on race and class over the Gates affair has been talk of the increasing impoverishment -- or, we should say, re-impoverishment -- of African Americans as a group.

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Rightwing Attacks Collide: 'Racist' Obama Using Health Reform for Reparations

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Peter Daou - Jul. 29 (Opinion) - In the swirling mass of news coverage and opinion-making on the issues of the day (Gates arrest, health care reform, birthers, etc.) we're seeing the...

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Henry Louis Gates, Troy Anthony Davis, and the 21st Century Color Line

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Amy Goodman - Jul. 22 (Opinion) - W.E.B. Du Bois' classic 1903 work "The Souls of Black Folk" opens with "The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line." Du Bois helped form the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which just

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Too Diverse to Fail

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Reason Magazine - By Michael C. Moynihan - Jul. 20 (Opinion) - According to a report in The Boston Globe, a small-circulation, Boston-based newspaper focusing on that city's black community "plans to accept a $200,000 loan from the city to stay afloat, despite criticism that the money could compromise its impartiality during an election year." The Bay State Banner, which ceased publication last month because of declining ad revenues, is the city's only black-owned newspaper. The news comes a week after a group of minority-owned broadcasters petitioned Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for federal aid, warning that "Minority-owned broadcasters are close to becoming an extinct species."

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Reforms should improve health care for blacks

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Tri State Defender - By George E. Hardin - Jul. 09 (Opinion) - The contentious debate over heath care has huge implications for African Americans. The Senate health committee this month is tackling the issue in response to President Barack Obama’s proposals. The aim is better care at more reasonable rates, especially for the 46 million citizens who are uninsured. Blacks in general stand to benefit. The National Institutes of Health reported in March that “As many as 1 in 100 black men and women develop heart failure before the age of 50, 20 times the rate of whites in this age group.” Its study showed that “heart failure developed in black participants at an average age of 39, often preceded by risk factors such as high blood pressure.” “Black women have almost twice the rate of advanced breast cancer as white women do, largely because the disease is often diagnosed after it has already progressed,” according to a May report from the Division of Oncology at the Emory University School of Medicine. The report also said some black women in the study refused radiation treatment and chemotherapy treatment. Social and cultural reasons were given as factors. Poverty also was an issue because some low-income women “don’t have the job security that some other people have. If they are absent from their job for days in a row, they’re going to lose their job.” Dr. Gretchen Kimmick, an associate professor of oncology at Duke University Medical Center, said, “Some of the women we take care of think God is going to take care of them, so they don’t pursue their treatment.” Some women were said to be embarrassed because they could not afford treatment.

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Oakland mourns

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Gary Kamiya - Mar. 28 (Opinion) - The four officers' murders stunned and saddened the broad Bay Area community, but there had been a few discordant notes. There's long been tension between the Oakland Police and the city's low-income black community, as in most other big cities. It was inflamed most recently by the New Year's Day killing of unarmed Oakland resident Oscar Grant, who was shot by BART police, not Oakland cops. Despite this tense background, most Oakland residents of every race and class were horrified by the killings, but there were a few examples of callousness and cruelty. The Associated Press reported that about 20 residents taunted police when they came to retrieve their fallen comrades in East Oakland on Saturday. The irrelevant resistance group Uhuru House even held a poorly attended rally Wednesday to defend Lovelle Mixon and criticize the police who killed him.

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So, Where are the New Republicans?

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Culture11 - By Dennis Sanders - Mar. 10 (Comment) - Ross Douthat has a good post today about Obama and the Center-Left. He notes that conservatives were happy with some of the Clintonite picks he made in the cabinet. However, as policy started coming out, those same conservatives (myself included) were not as happy.

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Obama Pressured by Israel Lobby to Boycott World Conference Against Racism

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Roberto Lovato - Mar. 03 (Opinion) - Obama's boycott reflects his choice to pursue the more dangerous path to dealing with race, racism and discrimination: symbolism at the expense of real changes to very devastating policies.

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The Corporate Media Is Shamelessly Pretending Racism Died When Obama Got Elected

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

FAIR - By Janine Jackson - Feb. 28 (Advocacy) - For those who don’t see racial inequity playing out every day in disparate joblessness, incarceration or mortality rates, the presence of a brown-skinned man in the White House means there’s no more structural work to be done; those struggling from now on have no excuse.

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Study Shows Disconnect between African Americans' Attitudes and Actions When It Comes to Personal Financial Planning

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Nationwide - Feb. 26 (Press Release) - A new survey of 1,200 participants commissioned by The Smiley Group and Nationwide Insurance shows 58 percent of African Americans expect their household situation to be better a year from now, compared to only 30 percent of the general population sharing similar optimism.

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Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

prisonradio.org - By Mumia Abu-Jamal - Feb. 26 (Comment) - (Audio file link)

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The Media Blows It