By George E. Curry
The Republican race to become the party’s presidential standard bearer has been increasingly characterized by candidates invoking racist stereotypes.

By John Payton
Editor’s Note: These remarks were delivered by John Payton, President and Director Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Monday to conference of the National Housing Law Project in Washington.

By Lee A. Daniels
Herman Cain, fresh from his surprise victory over Texas Governor Rick Perry in the Florida Republican Party straw poll, charged on CNN Wednesday that “African-Americans have been brainwashed into not being open minded, not even considering a conservative point of view.”

By Lee A. Daniels
The equality-loving – so they say – College Republican club at the University of California at Berkeley yesterday held what they described as a satirical “bake sale” on the storied campus to publicize their opposition to any change in 15-year-old ban against state institutions adopting affirmative action policies.

By The Editors The U.S. Supreme Court late Thursday stayed the scheduled execution by the state of  Texas of Duane Buck in order to review the appeal of Buck’s attorneys that his sentencing was tainted by racial bias. Buck, 48, who is African American, was convicted of the 1995 murder of his ex-girlfriend, Debra Gardner, [...]

By The Editors
For the last decade or so, we’ve been treated to a concentrated dose of one of the grand traditions of American history: the assertion that U.S.-born black Americans are last on the pecking order of American ethnic groups who “contribute” to American society.

The ACLU, NAACP and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) announced today that they oppose the Michigan Attorney General’s request to convene a special 16-judge panel to reconsider the court’s decision this month striking down Michigan’s Proposal 2.  The attorney general expressed his plans to request a rehearing by the full court of appeals today.

By Kenneth J. Cooper
Though we never met in our youth, the governor and I were on the back side of the first wave of large numbers of black students to attend New England boarding schools, until then the predominant preserve of the sons and daughters of elite white families.

By Lee A. Daniels
Before the heat got too great. Before the criticism forced them to shelve – at least, momentarily – the moral-deadening posture of “Lost Cause romanticism.” Before somebody told them You can’t say things like that today and get away with it, the self-proclaimed Christian pressure group, the FAMiLY Leader, revealed that when it comes to black Americans, its “traditional” views are very old-fashioned indeed.

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit struck down a Michigan ballot initiative that unconstitutionally limited access to opportunity at the state’s public universities and in other contexts. Passed in 2006 and commonly known as “Proposal 2,” the initiative was a deliberate effort to prohibit precisely the types of race-conscious admissions policies that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) as constitutionally permissible approaches to ensuring pathways to leadership in our nation’s civic, political, and economic life.