The Defenders Online | A Civil Rights Blog » race

The GOP Race that Can’t Get Beyond Race

The Editors — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:07:31 +0000

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

Housing and Race: The Continuing Crisis

The Editors — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 16:39:26 +0000

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.

Black Voters and the Black (and White) Conservative Shuffle

The Editors — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 16:14:37 +0000

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."

Paying Lip Service to Equality

The Editors — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 15:32:06 +0000

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.

Supreme Court Stays Execution of Duane Buck

The Editors — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 22:30:36 +0000

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, [...]

Same Old Tradition; New Faces

The Editors — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 18:16:56 +0000

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.

LDF, ACLU, NAACP Oppose AG’s Request to Rehear Proposal 2 Case

The Editors — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 18:23:47 +0000

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.

Prepping for the Future: Two Black Experiences

The Editors — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 20:09:01 +0000

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.

The FAMiLY Leader Pledge and Figments of the Racist Imagination

The Editors — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:16:35 +0000

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.

Court of Appeals Strikes Down Michigan Ballot Initiative Blocking Equal Opportunity in University Admissions

The Editors — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 19:56:40 +0000

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.

The Neo-Confederates’ German Sympathizers

The Editors — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 20:40:12 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels
These Germans express their pining for the white-supremacist days of old by clothing themselves as the heroic nineteenth-century defenders of white supremacy in the U.S.

New Study Examines the Role of Race in Political Representation

The Editors — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 20:23:44 +0000

By Kenneth J. Cooper
Anyone who cites the election of Barack Obama as proof the country has gotten beyond race should consider what Yale University researchers discovered in a new study that shows discrimination persists in political representation.

On Black Women’s Beauty . . . and the Beast(s) Within

The Editors — Tue, 24 May 2011 22:05:45 +0000

By Stacey Patton My Dear Sisters, Over the past week or so I’ve read many tweets, Facebook postings, blog rants, and online petitions in response to Psychology Today’s posting of a ‘scientific’ study – “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women” by Satoshi Kanazawa. The reaction to Kanazawa’s armchair psychobabble which was [...]

Unofficial ‘Apology’ to Recy Taylor Falls Short of Desired Mark

The Editors — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 19:58:34 +0000

By TaRessa Stovall
Why a personal instead of an official apology for the lack of justice in a Jim Crow attack whose victim is still alive…and waiting?

Welcome, Other Americans, to “The Other America”

The Editors — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:48:29 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels
Now, I see the purveyors of “manufactured paranoia” think it’s much better to spread their poisonous anger – to stoke a scapegoating frenzy – among several targets at once, the better, they think, to enable them to “take back” America.

Pride vs. Policy: Who Wins and Who Loses When More Folks Choose the Multi-racial Option?

The Editors — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 23:34:23 +0000

By TaRessa Stovall
The growth of multi-racial people and their assertion that their Census choices should reflect their presence in the population is presenting an interesting quandary.

Courage: Where Do We Need It Now?

The Editors — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 00:59:19 +0000

By The Editors
A panel of leaders who’ve worked to foster greater diversity told a public forum in Charlotte, North Carolina Thursday evening it was imperative that Americans regain their courage, their sense of community, and their faith that the country does have enough room, resources and opportunity for all.

LDF Successfully Defends Race-Conscious Admissions in Higher Education

The Editors — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 17:55:19 +0000

This week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the constitutionality of the admissions program utilized by the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) to assemble a diverse student body. Fisher v. Texas is the first federal appellate challenge to the use of race in university admissions since the Supreme Court’s landmark 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger. The Fifth Circuit’s unanimous decision affirms that UT Austin’s admissions plan is entirely consistent with Grutter.

Richard Nixon’s Bigotry

The Editors — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:03:24 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels
“You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference …”
If only Richard Nixon had kept the bitter promise he spat out to reporters the day after losing the California gubernatorial election in November, 1962.

PrimeLending Settles Federal Discrimination Complaint

The Editors — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 22:00:45 +0000

By Doug Miller
Facing prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), national mortgage lender PrimeLending has agreed to pay $2 million to African-American home buyers who the federal agency says were unfairly charged higher interest rates because of their race.

Three New Orleans Police Officers Convicted, Two Acquitted in the Post-Katrina Death of Henry Glover

The Editors — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 21:05:02 +0000

By The Editors
The legal reconstruction of and punishment for the whirlwind of lawlessness that coursed through the New Orleans police department in the wake of Hurricane Katrina five years ago took another step forward on Thursday, December 9.

Virginia: Intent on Considering the ‘Tough Stuff’ of American History

The Editors — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:22:58 +0000

By The Editors
On Friday, Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell said he would declare April 2011 as “Civil War in Virginia Month” in keeping with the state’s effort to “remember [its] past with candor, courage and conciliation.” McDonnell’s designation last winter of April as “Confederate History Month” provoked an intense national controversy.

The Beck-Palin Rally: Where Was The Rest of America?

The Editors — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:09:58 +0000

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, what does one call the ruse of pretending to imitate? By Lee A. Daniels There are roughly 38 million African Americans in America. Why did so few of them show up at the Glenn Beck- Sarah Palin “Restoring Honor” rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday? Salon [...]

Obama’s New American First: The President as ‘The Other’

The Editors — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:38:12 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels Today, American society is flooded with virulent, racially-driven images and rhetoric hurled against the President, saturated with the demonizing of undocumented Latino immigrants and calls for scrapping the constitutional protection all children born in America should enjoy, and degraded by cynical assertions that guilt-by-association is valid principle to apply to people who are not white

Baseball and Race: America’s Game – America’s Continuing Struggle

The Editors — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:40:09 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels
They’ve discovered – again – that baseball really is just like America.
That’s the meaning I took from Thursday’s New York Times story pointing out glaring racial disparity in the game between the positions of first-base and third-base coach. At the first-base position, twenty of the thirty coaches are of African-American, Latino-American or Asian descent. Of the thirty third-base coaches, twenty-three are white, three are black and four are Latino.