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By Doug Miller
Two subsidiaries of American International Group Inc. (AIG), the “ too big to fail” insurer that received one of the biggest slices of the federal financial services bailout, will pay more than $6 million to settle allegations that they discriminated against African Americans by charging them higher fees for mortgages transacted during a period from 2003 to 2006.
By Ralph Richardson
I am an NYC-based filmmaker, so I come to this Top 25 list with a wonderful joy and love for film, and since my mother took me to the movies every week since I was 3, I also have a pretty good knowledge of this grand art form
By Stacey Patton
“Oil Made Pickaninny Rich – Oklahoma Girl With $15,000 A Month Gets Many Proposals – Four White Men in Germany Want to Marry the Negro Child That They Might Share Her Fortune,” which appeared in The Kansas City Star on January 15, 1914, was just the first of many newspaper and magazine headlines during the next decade about Sarah Rector, the richest black child known to the world in that era.
By Ralph Richardson
Hey ya’ll, I’m back, this time with the Top Ten African-American TV Shows of All Time.
By TaRessa Stovall
A clever response to Beyonce’s super-hit, Single Ladies, with the line, “If you like it, then you should have put a ring on it,” has inspired a group of young students from the Hope Christian School in Milwaukee to create their own version with a very different—and much more empowering—message.
By Janet Singleton
Several days have passed since Maria Ragland Davis, Adriel Johnson, and Gopi Podila were murdered in a mass shooting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). But what could make the point blank killings of three innocent PhD scientists even more disheartening?
By Karyn Langhorne Folan
For many black women, dating a white man pushes romance and family toward a head-on collision.
*Warning: Explicit photographic content may be disturbing*
By Stacey Patton
When I saw news reports of the baker’s “Drunken Negro Head” cookie that he started selling on Martin Luther King Day and in “honor” of President Obama, I was immediately struck by its grotesque familiarity.
By Janet Singleton
Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair caused bad feelings last summer for many black female film-goers, who felt more betrayed than they did fairly portrayed by the film. Lost in all of the earsplitting debates and viral blog posts, was any deeper discussion of the health implications for black women and girls who use hair straightener
By Carleen Brice
It is 2002, 2003, 2004 or 2005 and I am listening to Jill Scott’s song, Try, a lot. I’m writing my first novel while holding down a job, and editing an anthology about black women and midlife.
By Doug Miller
After a recent meeting with U.S. Senate majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and members of the Congressional Black Caucus, John W. Boyd, Jr., the head of the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) said roughly 80,000 new claims have been filed under a re-energized suit to compensate black farmers for discrimination suffered at the hands of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), but funds earmarked to settle the claims apparently have been misplaced in the year-end budget shuffle.
By The Editors
Washington, D.C. — February 22 — In a closely-watched case involving the hiring of black firefighters in Chicago, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. today urged the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent mis-interpreted technical rules from blocking the correction of discrimination in employment.
By Marion Kilson and Florence Ladd
Our new book, Is That Your Child?: Mothers Talk About Rearing Biracial Children, is based on interviews with black and white mothers of biracial children. The book opens with our interview with each other, charts the challenges and rewards of rearing biracial children, and profiles black and white mothers with distinctive biracial parenting experiences. It concludes with suggestions for positive parenting strategies, which are relevant to all varieties of biracial combinations.
By Janet Singleton
As of January 1, 2010, the federal Mental Health Parity and Addiction Act will mandate that insurance coverage for mental health be comparable to that for other medical interventions, for group plans of companies employing 50 or more. What it means, for those who are sheltered beneath its modest umbrella, is that reimbursements, number of visits, annual and lifetime caps, co-payments, and any out-of-pocket costs for psychotherapy and related medications should be in line with, for example, treatment for diabetes.
By Jill Nelson
One could ask that question of Michelle Obama, but without expectation of the satisfying “reveal” provided by the game show. Not only are the stakes way too high, but the object of our attention and affection is too smart, pragmatic, in control, and cognizant of history and her own recent experience to fall for the fleeting drama of full disclosure.
The Wrong Kind of Color-Blindness in Hollywood
How “new” can an all-white Hollywood be? Controversy is swirling around the latest cover of Vanity Fair magazine, which features nine young Hollywood actresses and muses—all very young, very thin and exclusively white. There are no Asian, Black, Middle Eastern or Latina actresses featured in “A New Hollywood 2010.”
By Nicole Y. Dennis
I’ve come to believe that many black immigrants coming to the United States don’t really factor the existence of racism into their plan of achieving the American Dream. I think many immigrants overlook it, often seeking success with a tunnel vision. I speak from experience. That’s what I did.
By Ralph Richardson
Spike Lee and John Singleton are great—and significant—but neither blazed the trail or overcame the odds that the Father of African-American Cinema did. Indeed, they owe their careers to him, though few of the folk who go to see movies today even know who he is, or that he, a black man born less than 20 years after the Civil War, was an innovator and major influence in American cinema.
By Stacey Patton
First, I’d like to thank members of the Academy for not awarding a slew of Oscars to what New York Press film critic Armond White called “the biggest con job of the year” –Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire
By The Editors
In the past six months two separate bodies investigating New York State’s juvenile prisons – one a federal agency; the other, a state-appointed commission — have produced scathing reports of a system beset by longstanding calamitous problems.
By Jin Hee Lee, Vincent Southerland and Christina Swarns
Dissenting opinions — offered not by liberal advocates but by moderate, if not conservative, law-and-order judges — stand as a strong rebuke to the presumed effectiveness of the death penalty system. And they also confirm longstanding concerns about how abuses of power, under-resourced defense counsel, and racial bias undermine both the accuracy and judiciousness of death penalty convictions.
The Wrong Kind of Color-Blindness in Hollywood
How “new” can an all-white Hollywood be? Controversy is swirling around the latest cover of Vanity Fair magazine, which features nine young Hollywood actresses and muses—all very young, very thin and exclusively white. There are no Asian, Black, Middle Eastern or Latina actresses featured in “A New Hollywood 2010.”
Peace involves inevitable righteousness, justice, wholesomeness, fullness of life, participation in decision making, goodness, laughter, joy, compassion, sharing and reconciliation.
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New
By Jackie Jones
Gay and lesbian couples are now able to marry legally in the nation’s capital. A large part of making that happen came from a direct campaign to win the support of the city’s African-American residents, long believed to be opposed to such a law.
New
By Stacey Patton
First, I’d like to thank members of the Academy for not awarding a slew of Oscars to what New York Press film critic Armond White called “the biggest con job of the year” –Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire
New
By Eisa Nefertari Ulen
It is entirely fitting that the character that must risk the most in this film, and change completely, is a white dude. Cameron has explored geo-political realities facing our world that make the politics of color in this film work.
New
Although James Waller was paroled in 1993, he continued fighting to prove his innocence for the rape conviction for which he had served a decade in prison. Waller was found guilty based mainly on a single eyewitness identification from the child victim, despite having a strong alibi. After saving money for DNA testing, he was excluded as a match for hairs found at the crime scene, but it took almost five more years for further DNA tests, obtained with the assistance of the Innocence Project, to fully clear him. Waller was pardoned three years ago this week.
Remembering Selma 1965 and The March That Changed America
By The Editors
Friday, March 5, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) marked the 45th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” march in Selma in the spirit the marchers of that day would have appreciated—by working with the citizens of Selma and other communities to ensure the voting rights won that day remain secure.
A Crack In The Danziger Bridge Cover-Up
By Lee A. Daniels
What was the scope of the lawlessness some New Orleans police officers unleashed against people in that devastated city in the days after Hurricane Katrina struck?
How many people did officers unlawfully shoot? How many did they kill? How many others were victimized in other ways by police officers’ illegal use of force? [...]
The Business of You: Credit Card Rules Feel More Like a Shell Game
By Jackie Jones
The Center for Responsible Lending…has laid out what the new credit card policy legislation that went into effect Feb. 21 really will and won’t do.
Is the Free Ride Over for NYC Students?
By Doug Miller
Richard Brodsky, the legislator who chairs the New York State Assembly’s committee overseeing the operations of the MTA, says that while its officials have a legitimate gripe about funding its operating budget, the agency is floating phony numbers in its threat to eliminate free and reduced fares for New York City school kids.
The Abdication of Desirée Rogers
New
By Janet Singleton
White House Social Secretary Desirée Rogers stepped down from her position this month, and said farewell: She told the Chicago Sun Times that serving the country “had been an honor and a privilege.” She was leaving, she said because she wants to “explore opportunities in the corporate world.” She denied her decision stems from the scandal in which a couple and a separate individual were able to sneak into a state dinner given by the Obama administration to honor Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in November.
Will the ‘Real’ Michelle Obama Please Stand Up?
By Jill Nelson
One could ask that question of Michelle Obama, but without expectation of the satisfying “reveal” provided by the game show. Not only are the stakes way too high, but the object of our attention and affection is too smart, pragmatic, in control, and cognizant of history and her own recent experience to fall for the fleeting drama of full disclosure.
Attorney-General Eric Holder Bids Jake Henderson Farewell
By Maynard Eaton
The nation’s top lawman cleared his busy schedule on March 1, to travel to Atlanta to attend the funeral of Jacob Henderson, Jr., a pioneering military attorney during the 1960s who became an expert on international travel and a leading Atlanta businessman.
Theodore Lamont Cross: 1924 – 2010
By John Payton
The death on February 28 of Theodore Lamont Cross deprives the world and American society and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. of an extraordinary counselor and friend.
‘Hollyhood’: Real-Life in La-La Land
New
By Eisa Nefertari Ulen
As we digest and debate the results of the 82nd Annual Academy Awards—including the racial aspects of various wins and nominations—Hollywood insider Valerie Joyner’s debut novel, Hollyhood, has special resonance and relevance.