Black People

Everyone who has ever tuned into a cable channel has heard the names Natalee Holloway and Laci Peterson. Show hosts like Nancy Grace have used their TV pulpits to chronicle the disappearance of such white, female victims night after night. But what about black victims like Yasmin Acree or missing sisters Diamond and Tiondra Bradley? That's one of the questions raised by a new docu-series, "Find Our Missing," hosted by S. Epatha Merkerson and produced by TV One, the African-American-themed cable channel based in Silver Spring.

Baltimore's top cop warned Tuesday against "race-baiting" amid rising tensions across the nation, citing the Trayvon Martin case and cautioning that a video generating outrage on the Internet of a tourist being beaten and stripped in downtown Baltimore does not appear to depict a hate crime. Police CommissionerFrederick H. Bealefeld III, appearing on WBAL's "The C4 Show," said the attack on a 31-year-old white man from Arlington, Va., appears to be nothing beyond "drunken opportunistic criminality.

Baltimore's top cop warned Tuesday against "race-baiting" amid rising tensions across the nation, citing the Trayvon Martin case and cautioning that a video generating outrage on the Internet of a tourist being beaten and stripped in downtown Baltimore does not appear to depict a hate crime. Police CommissionerFrederick H. Bealefeld III, appearing on WBAL's "The C4 Show," said the attack on a 31-year-old white man from Arlington, Va., appears to be nothing beyond "drunken opportunistic criminality.

The two men, wearing slacks and ties, are standing on an East Baltimore street corner in front of a vacant lot. Raymond Staubs, 29, squats down and flips on a guitar amp. In one hand is a Bible, in the other a microphone. "It's time to repent - commit to God!" Staubs shouts. "Keep the Ten Commandments - thou shall not kill! Holler it from the rooftops! Put away the guns, put away the dope. Hallelujah!" It's the middle of the afternoon, and Staubs' words are mere background noise as city police investigate another fatal shooting.

In 1926, Carter G. Woodson, through his organization, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (later renamed the Association for the Study of African American Life and History), founded and promoted Negro History Week. He selected February because Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass' birthdays fell during this month. His desire was for Americans to recognize and celebrate the achievements and accomplishments of black people. The response was overwhelming, as black schools, black churches and black and white community leaders around the country rallied behind this call and pushed Negro History Week to the forefront.

NEW YORK -- I have been writing for some time about the problems of public education. I also have been highly critical of the elements in popular culture that encourage young people toward illiteracy, brutishness, hatred of women, whorishness and mindless materialism. Now we find that these troubles are combining in yet another way: as obstacles that prevent black kids from doing well in society. It is often difficult to talk about these things, because those who function on the racist circuits of our nation describe poor academic performance by black kids as proof of inherent inferiority, the intellectual quicksand of bad genes.

The two men, wearing slacks and ties, are standing on an East Baltimore street corner in front of a vacant lot. Raymond Staubs, 29, squats down and flips on a guitar amp. In one hand is a Bible, in the other a microphone. "It's time to repent - commit to God!" Staubs shouts. "Keep the Ten Commandments - thou shall not kill! Holler it from the rooftops! Put away the guns, put away the dope. Hallelujah!" It's the middle of the afternoon, and Staubs' words are mere background noise as city police investigate another fatal shooting.

WASHINGTON -- When President Clinton observed Martin Luther King's birthday in a speech at Howard University here last week, he took the occasion to return to his campaign against the use of guns in street violence, saying it would be particularly wrenching to the slain civil rights leader to see how children are imperiled by it.Before a predominantly black audience, Clinton spoke of the need for further racial conciliation and observed that "this is...

RECENTLY, Christie's, the famed New York auction house, became the target of a decades-old struggle of African Americans: The fight for black cultural survival.After a public outcry, Christie's withdrew from sale several 19th-century slavery documents slated to be auctioned to the highest bidder. Instead, Christie's will donate the items to museums.Equating Christie's aborted sale with cultural exploitation is a continuation of a cultural war that gained momentum among black people after Emancipation.

Once again. African-Americans and poor people are the victims of politics. First, they closed the pool in Druid Hill Park on weekdays. It was only open on the weekend until late June so children who can't afford to go to swim clubs had to suffer. Next, they combined Stone Soul Picnic with the African-American Festival. They have also moved the Caribbean Festival out of Druid Hill Park. The sad part about what's been happening is that it's coming under the watch of an African-American mayor.

In 1926, Carter G. Woodson, through his organization, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (later renamed the Association for the Study of African American Life and History), founded and promoted Negro History Week. He selected February because Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass' birthdays fell during this month. His desire was for Americans to recognize and celebrate the achievements and accomplishments of black people. The response was overwhelming, as black schools, black churches and black and white community leaders around the country rallied behind this call and pushed Negro History Week to the forefront.

Everyone who has ever tuned into a cable channel has heard the names Natalee Holloway and Laci Peterson. Show hosts like Nancy Grace have used their TV pulpits to chronicle the disappearance of such white, female victims night after night. But what about black victims like Yasmin Acree or missing sisters Diamond and Tiondra Bradley? That's one of the questions raised by a new docu-series, "Find Our Missing," hosted by S. Epatha Merkerson and produced by TV One, the African-American-themed cable channel based in Silver Spring.

At the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Sen. Barack Obama said, "There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America -- there is the United States of America. " Those were welcome and commendable words. Unfortunately, they appear to be only words. Since then, President Obama has divided us along race and class lines more than any modern president. Some of his strongest, high-profile supporters in the black community are now saying that President Obama's race, alone, should be enough for black voters to vote for his re-election.

Once again. African-Americans and poor people are the victims of politics. First, they closed the pool in Druid Hill Park on weekdays. It was only open on the weekend until late June so children who can't afford to go to swim clubs had to suffer. Next, they combined Stone Soul Picnic with the African-American Festival. They have also moved the Caribbean Festival out of Druid Hill Park. The sad part about what's been happening is that it's coming under the watch of an African-American mayor.

Havana -- To look at her meager two-room house that doubles as a storefront souvenir shop, it may not seem that Vivian Madrigal Ponjuan has a lot in life. But she says she is fortunate because she has a roof that doesn't leak, running water and a refrigerator full of food. The fact that she has a warm place to sleep is a gift of the revolution more than 40 years ago that put Fidel Castro in power, she said. Life before the revolution was hard for her family, who, like many blacks, lived in extreme poverty.

City officials in Vidor, Texas, screamed foul when news broke that their town was once one of America's notorious "sundown towns" for blacks. In the segregation era, that was the town fathers' not-so-discreet way of warning black people that they would be jailed, assaulted or worse if they were caught in town after dark. Vidor officials vehemently insisted that they have long since disavowed that naked, in-your-face racism. They contend that the press latched onto the town's woeful past to grab cheap, sensationalist headlines.

WHEN BLACK History Month was established, I found it interesting that of all the months of the year, February, the shortest month, was chosen as the time to reflect upon the achievements of black people. Another example of black folks' getting the short end of the stick, I thought -- a sentiment no doubt shared by many other black people. But the truth is, the observance was started by the historian Carter G. Woodson in 1926 as Negro History Week. At least we've advanced from a week to a month, albeit the shortest one.As we observe another Black History Month, I have an idea.

From Ebonics, I know a little bit, though it isn't my native tongue. Personally, I was raised on Yiddishonics, which is a variation on Polishonics and Italonics and, for that matter, the newly controversial Ebonics. It's a simple enough translation. You take the juiciest bits of your own people's dialect, and you mix touches of it with standard English, and from this you get the thing we've always called America.In Yiddishonics, generations of Jews rooted in eastern Europe led with the verb ("Make the window shut, it's cold outside")

When the levees in New Orleans broke, something other than water spilled out: long-simmering racial tensions. Certainly, Katrina has devastated people of all backgrounds and income levels, and diverse people the world over have empathized with the tragedy. But the devastation of New Orleans - which is nearly 70 percent black, where the gulf between the poor and rich is as wide as the Mississippi River - has brought to the forefront issues of race and class. "This isn't very complicated, except for this is America," said Ronald Walters, a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, College Park.

WASHINGTON - Call it an object lesson in the quality of equality. I refer to the recent Senate subcommittee hearing on the proposed constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage. And specifically, to an exchange between two leaders of the black community. The first, Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington bureau of the NAACP, argued that the amendment "would use the Constitution to discriminate." Which brought a sharp retort from the Rev. Richard Richardson, chairman of political affairs for the Black Ministerial Alliance of Greater Boston Inc. Defining marriage as the union of a woman and a man, he said, "is not discrimination.