As long as most of us can remember, Black communities have taught and believed that a college education is the key to social and economic advancement. But according to a new research and policy brief by Brandeis University scholars, that long-held belief is only one of several factors affecting Black America’s ability to build wealth. ...

In oral arguments before the Supreme Court on the Voting Rights Act, Justice Antonin Scalia slandered the act as a “racial entitlement,” arguing, “whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.” So, the right-wing justice intimated, the conservative “Gang of Five” on the Supreme Court had every right to step in and overrule the ...

While Detroit’s “white”-controlled news media is all but dancing in the streets over the conviction of former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, proclaiming that “justice has been served,” most “Black” Detroiters recognize this for what it is: Part of a nationwide Justice Department campaign, which has continued under Republican and Democratic administrations, including President Barack Obama’s, to decapitater majorit ...

I agree that Detroiters and other disenfranchised people around the state and the world must fight to restore everything that has been taken from us: - Basic democratic rights for local governance of the city and school system. - The reversal of the so-called “Right to Work” legislation and the implementation of the right of workers to bargain and control labor policy. - Restoration to the people of everyth ...

“One picture,” Fred R. Bernard once aptly remarked, “is worth a thousand words.” But, we need only a few words to describe an unsettling truth vividly depicted in the drawing shown below. On first glance this picture evokes visual images of cruelty, dehumanization, exploitation, racism, injustice, corruption, disenfranchisement, arbitrary punishment and a host of other instruments of oppression people use t ...

The Sup-reme Court has heard yet another challenge to the Voting Rights Act in the case of Shelby v. Holder. On the same day, across the street in the congressional rotunda, a statue honoring Rosa Parks was unveiled. And this week, the nation will celebrate the 48th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the march from Selma to Montgomery that helped spur President Lyndon B. Johnson to champion the act. ...

Let’s just take one day, Feb. 27, 2013, as a snapshot of the state of equality and justice in America. For me, that day started off tense. The Supreme Court was set to hear oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a constitutional challenge to one of the most effective provisions of any civil rights law in American history: Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. ...

While it is certainly encouraging to see the robust development activity underway in Downtown Detroit and Midtown by Dan Gilbert and others, most Detroiters realize our city’s real resurrection lies with finding adequate employment not just for the educated middle-class population, but also finding a way to employ those individuals who are facing overwhelming barriers, such as a criminal record and substanc ...

So we are going to have all our elected leaders pushed aside because the city of Detroit is broke, yea? Did we ever ask how a city could be broke? Is a city a system of roads? Is a city the police that keep those streets safe? Is the city the people who show up to put out fires? Is a city a management system? ...

Howard University is regarded by many as the cradle of the Black Power movement. It is the alma mater of Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), who is often credited with popularizing the slogan “Black Power” as a rallying cry for militant struggles for self-determination and justice. It is ironic then that General Carter Ham, outgoing head of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), selected Howard as a place to confess o ...