By Lee A. Daniels
The Great Recession still gripping the American economy has produced alarming numbers in such volume and for so long that new ones have lost their power to shock.

But among the fateful questions those numbers provoke are these: Is the American middle class as a whole caught in a spiral of downward mobility? And are the black and Latino middle classes caught in spirals of even greater virulence.

Jefferson Thomas, one of the Little Rock Nine, died Sunday. In 1957 he and eight other black teenagers in Little Rock, Arkansas, risked their lives to go to the high school they were entitled to in order to prove the greatest declaration of American idealism had meaning.

By Kenneth J. Cooper
So far this year three states have passed laws to help ex-offenders land jobs. But because the changes in anti-discrimination statutes impact the back end of incarceration, they don’t wring any of the rampant racial unfairness out of the criminal justice system.

By The Editors
Congress has yet to approve the appropriation, and it doesn’t look like, with the mid-term election looming, they’re going to this year.

By Janet Singleton
It can take your money, your health, and even your life. Yet in the black community mental illness is not taken seriously.

By George E. Curry
Almost every day, the public is bombarded with news reports that President Obama’s standing in the polls is at the lowest level of his presidency.