Top 25 African-American Films of All Time

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

Sarah Rector: The Richest Colored Girl in the World

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.

My Top 10 African-American TV Shows of All Time

By Ralph Richardson
Hey ya’ll, I’m back, this time with the Top Ten African-American TV Shows of All Time.

‘If You Learned It, Then You Should Have Got an A On It’

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.

What the Amy Bishop Case Says About Race and Crime

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?

‘I Can’t Believe You Brought Home a White Boy’

By Karyn Langhorne Folan
For many black women, dating a white man pushes romance and family toward a head-on collision.

A Fun Face?

*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.

Chemical Relaxers: The Facts Might Not Be So Relaxing

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

From Orange Mint and Honey to Sins of the Mother: The Power of Story Endures

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.

Black Farmers Settlement Fund: Now you see it, now you don’t

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.

LDF Defends Chicago Black Firefighters

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.

Is That Your Child? Mothers Talk About Rearing Biracial Children

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.

Mental Health Parity 2010

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.

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.

Poll# 18

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.”

A Black Immigrant’s Experience with Coming to Terms with Race Relations in America

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.

Father of African-American Cinema Receives Stamp of Greatness

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.

“Precious” and the Oscars

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

Juvenile Detention Facilities in New York State: The Ghetto Dynamic at Work

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.

A Cause for Dissent: The Death Penalty’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment

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.