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Black People, Be Careful What You Ask for When You Ask for Gun Control
For the most part, Rep. John Lewis had the right idea. Battle-tested by the civil rights movement and still inclined to be driven by conscience rather than convenience, the 76-year-old Georgia congressman recently led his Democratic colleagues in a 26-hour sit-in to protest the House of Representatives’ refusal to do anything to stop people like…
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Poverty Doesn't Stop Cuba From Keeping Its Black Citizens Healthy, so What’s America’s Excuse?
Whenever I hear Cubans talk about their nation’s advancements in health care, and when I think about where the U.S. is on all this, what I hear is a tale of two scarcities. The tales, however, end differently for the people of color who are the main characters. Although Cuba has, for the past five decades,…
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Red States Aren’t That Red for Trump, Thanks to Latinos
Donald Trump may be on his way to claiming the Republican presidential nomination, at least in part, by vowing to build a wall to keep Mexicans out of the U.S., but many of those Mexicans may have quietly built a wall that will keep him out of the White House. That wall is emerging in…
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Before Emmett Till’s Death, Willie James Howard, 15, Was Murdered in Fla.
Eleven years before Emmett Till’s bloated and brutalized corpse was displayed on the pages of Jet magazine as proof of the South’s atrocities against African Americans, there was Willie James Howard. The difference was that in 1944, there was no Jet magazine to tell Willie’s story, of how the 15-year-old’s crush on a white girl…
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Is Donald Trump Vying to Become the Next George Wallace?
Replace Donald Trump’s New York accent with a Southern drawl, then replace his use of “illegals” with the n-word, and there you have it: a 2015 version of George Wallace, Alabama’s segregationist governor who stoked fear and prejudice to find his place in politics. And like Wallace—who, after losing his first race for governor in…
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Why It’s Important to Remember Cuba’s Connection to Africa
Since President Barack Obama restored diplomatic relations with Cuba—culminating with the reopening of the U.S. Embassy in Havana last week after being shuttered for more than 50 years—much has been written about the country’s ties to black America. But this renewed relationship with Cuba allows African Americans to explore not only those connections but also Cuba’s connections…
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A Conversation With Cuba That Is Long Overdue
Two weeks before President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. and Cuba would reopen embassies that had been shuttered for more than 50 years, I was embarking on a bit of diplomacy of my own. Abel Contreras, a black Cuban I first met in 2009 on a reporting trip to Cuba and who served as our…
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Law Enforcement and the KKK Have a Close History in Florida
Once upon a time in Florida, for many law-enforcement officers, being in the Ku Klux Klan was almost akin to being in the Fraternal Order of Police. This was especially true in Lake County, a central county of the state once ruled by the Klan and the brutality and bigotry of Sheriff Willis McCall. “The…
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The Baby as Accessory: This Ridiculed Mom Didn’t Start It
On one level, I can see how Shona Carter-Brooks got it twisted. Carter-Brooks is the Tennessee bride who decided that the “something new” to include in her wedding-day wardrobe would be her 1-month-old daughter. So she fastened the infant in the folds of her bridal gown as if she was adding a tulle bow or…
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How ‘Stand Your Ground’ Is Killing Black People
If Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis weren’t worthy-enough victims for people to push for “Stand your ground” laws to be revised or repealed, Sherdavia Jenkins should be. In 2006 Sherdavia, 9, was playing with her doll in the courtyard of the Miami housing project where she lived when Damon “Red Rock” Darling and Leroy “Yellowman”…
Black News and Black Views with a Whole Lotta Attitude
