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Complicity Has Its Cost: An Open Letter to the Mayor of Jena

Written by Tim Wise

Wednesday, 17 October 2007

Dear Mayor Murphy McMillin,

I hear that you're angry. Me too. But it appears our outrage is directed at decidedly different targets.

I, for one, am angry at the three young white men in your town who, last year, hung nooses from a tree after a black student dared sit under it, thereby touching off several months of racial tension. And I'm mad at their parents for whatever it is they taught their kids - or failed to teach them - that would allow their children to believe such a thing appropriate.

But it is not these persons who have elicited your anger.

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Will Globalization Destroy Black America?

Written by Phillip Jackson
Tuesday, 09 October 2007
The Black Star Project The lack of response to globalization by Black America is frightening and troubling. While much of the world has adapted to the new-world economy and new-world standards of existence, most of Black America is still operating much the same way it did in the 1950s and 1960s. But now, throughout Black communities in America, there is a whisper campaign by Black people who don't know each other and Black people who live in different parts of the country, saying to each other, "We are in trouble!" We know it and the rest of the world knows it! Black America, as we know it, is in danger of not surviving globalization. Read More Add Comment (2) Hits: 578

The Role of the Black Elite in Outreaching to the Black Lower Class...

Written by Dr. Martin Kilson, PhD

Thursday, 27 September 2007

...And How It Relates to the National Leadership Level of the NAACP

Black Commentator

Recent events affecting the national leadership level of the NAACP brought vividly to my attention the question of the 21st century Black elite role in “outreaching-to-Black-lower-class-crises.” After just under two years as executive officer of the NAACP, Bruce Gordon resigned from that office in December 2006. On March 6, 2007, Bruce Gordon presented a “Memo of Resignation” to members of the NAACP National in which he discussed the core reasons underlying his resignation....

I received a copy of Bruce Gordon’s resignation memo in mid-July and after reading it, I had no doubt about its significance to the issue of the role of the 21st century Black elite sector in “outreaching-to-Black-lower-class-crises.” Or to put this matter in the conceptual terms that are implied in Gordon’s resignation memo, his memo relates to the issue of fashioning a new post-Civil Rights Movement leadership identity for the NAACP, an identity that interconnects that great organization’s historical “civil rights advocacy function” with a 21st century “Black social-crisis reformation function.”

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Outraged Activists Revoke “Free Black Passes” for BET and the Minstrel Show Industry

Written by Bruce Dixon, Black Agenda Report Managing Editor
Sunday, 23 September 2007
Longstanding black discontent with the character and content of BET, MTV and much of commercial black radio is giving way to open protest. African American protesters are regularly showing up outside the homes of corporate execs, including the black ones who have made billions beaming degraded and degrading images of African into black homes and around the planet, demanding something better. Will they abandon the old C. Delores Tucker stance of blaming artists and consumers for an approach that questions corporate decision making power over the media universe? BAR talks to Rev. Delman Coates of the Enough is Enough Campaign. Read More Add Comment (1) Hits: 376

Free The Jena Six: And A New Generation Of Activists Are Engaged In The Jim Crow Struggle

Written by Dr. Anthony Asadullah Samad, PhD
Thursday, 20 September 2007
Anthony Samad This week, thousands of people will descend on the small Louisiana town of Jena to take a stand against Jim Crow justice. No small town has gotten as much attention for its racial politics since Forsythe County, Georgia in the late-1980s. That, of course, was an extension of Birmingham and Selma and other small towns that became the focal points of racial injustice after local issues became national protest movements. Being under a national microscope ain’t easy when justice is being twisted. And it’s obvious justice has been twisted. Even the state of Louisiana Third Circuit Court of Appeals is saying so. Read More Add Comment (0) Hits: 380