The Gantt Report By Lucius Gantt – Growing up in the housing projects and ghettos of Atlanta, I saw my share of gamblers, hustlers, pickpockets, peddlers and pan handlers. When I moved to Tallahassee, I saw a lot of things but a lot of things I didn’t see! Let me explain. Growing up on the […]
Commentary
Gridlock in Congress Enables Continuation of Racially and Economically Biased Education Initiatives By Kirk Clay
Washington, DC – This week the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce held yet another hearing about the No Child Left Behind Act. As Congress continues their never-ending debate about the perils of NCLB, two education initiatives that disproportionately and negatively impact the poor and people of color, are about to be overlooked […]
An Equation for Disaster: Black Youth + Poverty – Jobs = Screwed
By Deven D. Anderson, Black Youth Vote! – It’s a critical time in America. The recession has been tough, especially for young black American’s who are faced with bleak job prospects, exorbitant student loans and overwhelming hopelessness. With and unemployment rate for young black males over 18 percent, young black men are still hemorrhaging and […]
Jobs Bill a Step in Right Direction – By Dr. Julianne Malveaux
I was among the millions who eagerly looked forward to President Obama’s speech on jobs last week, among the millions who hoped our President would finally get his arms around the issue that plagues millions of Americans. The official unemployment rates, after all, are nothing more than a pleasant fiction. The 9.1 percent unemployment rate […]
Obama’s Burden: Addressing the Black Labor Crisis in “Post-Racial” America
By Avis Jones-DeWeever (HuffingtonPost.com) – When President Obama addresses the nation with his long-awaited jobs prescription, one thing is certain. Any strategy he puts forth now must not only seek to move the needle for the nation as a whole, it must also include specific remedies for the ever-deepening jobs crisis within black America. Though […]
Back to School and Back to Work on Creating Jobs – By Marc H. Morial
(To Be Equal #36) – Labor Day marks the unofficial end of summer and the start of another school year for more than 60 million public school students. This year, the Labor Day weekend also coincided with the announcement last week that zero jobs were added in August, and African American unemployment has soared to […]
Black America: Truth vs. Myth? Constant efforts to veil the truth of Black Americans from Black America
“History does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.” – James Baldwin Baldwin’s proclamation that “the great […]
WORDS MATTER: King Out of Context – Just Fix It! – By Julianne Malveaux
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was anything but an “arrogant twit”. Yet Dr. Maya Angelou called it entirely correctly when she said that one of the quotes engraved on the side of the new memorial to Dr. King portrays the man as a braggart, not the humble servant leader that he was. “I was a […]
National Urban League Brings Empowerment Summit to Atlanta
Marc H. Morial – “It is troubling that unemployment is so high…and that we are so caught up in details of deficits and debt ceilings that we question whether government has any moral duty to serve the poor, help feed the hungry and assist the sick.” U.S. Representative and civil rights legend, John Lewis of […]