The funding formula used to provide grants to New Orleans residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita very likely disadvantaged black homeowners because it was based on depressed property values that result from both current racial isolation and the city’s segregated past, a U.S. District Court judge has indicated.
As the [...]

By Lee A. Daniels
The so-called digital divide in possession and use of cell phones, laptops and other such devices – which once prompted anguished predictions that black Americans would be left behind on the information superhighway – is fast narrowing.

By The Editors
For more than a decade, the class-action lawsuit involving tens of thousands of the nation’s black farmers on the one side and the federal Department of Agriculture on the other stood as a dramatic symbol of the institutional racism undermining even black Americans involved in one of America’s mythic occupations.

By Doug Miller
Legislation in Congress that would make it easier for workers to form unions is doomed because the Obama administration , with so many other hard contentious issues on its agenda, won’t risk political capital in its defense, according to some experts on trade unionism.

By Khalil Gibran Muhammad
“Education is the key to success. Knowledge is power.” Wise words repeated countless times to young people at home and in school every single day. But what should we say to them if one day their hard work meets empty promises, if their dreams are deferred, or their first paycheck of material reward is marked insufficient funds.

By Jill Nelson
The Haitian earthquake crisis will be remembered as the moment in which the technology and platforms that enable social networking were used and transformed by ordinary citizens—the period when Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and other social networking sites became agents of change, and technology transcended commercialism, politics, personality, and trivia.

By Chinyere Osuala
Just Food, a non-profit organization that advocates a just and sustainable food system in New York City, hosted a site visit on Tuesday to the Farm at Miller’s Crossing in Hudson, N.Y. to bring staff, volunteers, and clients of inner-city emergency food organizations in touch with the farms that provide them with fresh fruits and vegetables, weekly, through Just Food’s Fresh Food For All Program.

By Beryl Satter
In the 1950s, speculators combed white neighborhoods, purchasing property from whites and then reselling them to blacks—at double to quadruple market value. Even worse, they sold these overpriced properties “on contract,” that is, on the installment plan. Black buyers made a down payment and were responsible for taxes, insurance, maintenance, and interest, but could lose the property if they missed even one payment. They were forced to accept such brutal terms, since in Chicago as nationally, most banks refused to loan to them; if they wanted to buy at all, they had to buy from speculators.

By The Editors
John Payton vigorously defended Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s fitness to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday in a charged debate with conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan on the MSNBC program “Hardball with Chris Matthews.”

By The Editors
President Obama will nominate Jacqueline A. Berrien, Associate Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), to be the new Chair of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.