Salon.com > Black

Barack Obama: Incidental black man?

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:58:00 +0000

With all the distracting controversies piling on his political plate, who could blame President Obama for getting reflective at his recent commencement speech to Morehouse College graduates? Who could blame the first black president, typically a cool arbiter of analysis and restraint, for getting personal in his remarks to his receptive, brotherly crowd?

How does a black president deliver 2013 Morehouse graduates realistic advice and a pep talk at the same time? How can he optimistically send them forth — with straight talk, or a straight face?

The average white family has about $632,000 in wealth, versus $98,000 for black families. The overall unemployment rate for whites is 6.7 percent, versus 13 percent for blacks, generally. The unemployment rate for black young adults ages 16 to 24 -- those outside the commencement halls -- is 25 percent, on par with Spanish- or Greek-level joblessness.

Forget Bloomberg’s nanny state

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:40:00 +0000

I have seen it with my own eyes, and heard the stories of cousins, brothers and friends. Innocent of crime, guilty of no infraction, they are harassed, placed against walls, handcuffed, sometimes released, sometimes incited -- but never respected. For many African-American citizens of New York City, there is an axiomatic truth that the New York Police Department neither serves nor protects them.

This month, NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk policy -- which entails officers regularly stopping predominantly black and Latino men and frisking them for weapons and drugs -- went on trial in federal Court. The class-action lawsuit, Floyd v. City of New York, challenges the NYPD policy on the basis that it violates the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause, and the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, the NYPD's own data show hundreds of thousands of unconstitutional stops in the past three years alone, and expert analysis of their data -- controlling for crime, neighborhood and patterns of police deployment -- has found that the mitigating factor in NYPD stops is race.

Allen West at CPAC: No moderation!

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 15:27:00 +0000

Allen West may have lost his seat in Congress, but he's still a star here at CPAC, where attendees rose and waved Tea Party Gadsden flags as the former soldier took the stage to give a rousing speech filled with conservative red meat.

“Last November, we did take one on the jaw,” West said of the 2012 election. "There is no shortage of people telling us ... how we must change our values to fit the times. But ladies and gentlemen, I want to tell you, that truly is a bunch of malarkey. Last time I checked, a bended knee is not a conservative tradition."

West went on to tell an odd anecdote about Winston Churchill. A woman once told the famed British prime minister that she did not like his mustache or his politics, West said, to which Churchill responded: "You are not likely to come into contact with either."

Just how factual is “Lincoln”?

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 12:45:00 +0000

The debate over the facts in "Zero Dark Thirty" rages on, as the sources behind Kathryn Bigelow's self-proclaimed work of cinematic journalism remain obscure. Fortunately for Steven Spielberg, his film has not been the target of media scrutiny. But while "Lincoln" arguably leads the field for the best picture Academy Award and is a huge financial hit, there are historians who believe the film paints a simplistic view of the Great Emancipator and the process of passing the 13th Amendment.

"It coheres, in some ways, very well, and, in some ways, not so well," says Bruce Levine, a historian from the University of Illinois who just published the well-received Civil War history "The Fall of the House of Dixie." "I give them a mixed review."

The film's focus on a narrow period of history — from after the 1864 election to Abraham Lincoln's assassination — necessarily overemphasizes Lincoln's role in ending an institution that was nearing its death, said Levine. "There are fundamental gaps in 'Lincoln.' Watching the film, you don't know that by the time of the events described, slavery is already badly undermined — slaves have been running away from their masters in border states and Confederate states even before fighting began."

Will whites see a black indie film like “Middle of Nowhere”?

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 18:25:00 +0000

It’s already an extremely tough marketplace for small independent films that arrive without a lot of brand identity or star power, and it might be three times tougher when you’re talking about a movie like Ava DuVernay’s “Middle of Nowhere” – a beautiful, sober and even grave social drama with an entirely African-American cast. (OK, Sharon Lawrence has a dispensable bit part as a hard-ass white lawyer.) This is an issue guaranteed to make everyone feel uncomfortable, but it does no good to run away from it: There’s very little audience (black, white or otherwise) for black-oriented films that aren’t about gangsters or rappers, or that aren’t Tyler Perry–style moralistic melodramas. In fact, experience tells me it’ll be tough to get people to read this article, let alone see the film.