Commentary

ABOVE CARTOON:  David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star By Earl Ofari Hutchinson In January, 2010, two years into his White House tenure, President Barack Obama journeyed to a GOP confab in Baltimore. There was an issue that he wanted to confront head on. That was the at times open attacks and at other times snide innuendos…

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By Earl Ofari Hutchinson News mogul Rupert Murdoch stirred mild fury when he claimed GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson would be a “real black president.” Forget the racial insult, the stock rightwing putdown of President Barack Obama, and the fact that this preposterous dig came from Murdoch. What is more interesting is Murdock’s rationale for…

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ABOVE PHOTO:  Listening to Booker T. Washington. An African American audience, some standing on railroad box cars, in New Orleans, Louisiana. 1912.  (Copyright: Everett Historical) By Rahim Islam In part one of my series, I wrote about the distinction between Black culture versus the assimilated Black and American culture and the diversity of the Black community….

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By Derrick Z. Jackson bostonglobe.com Not since George Wallace has a baldly racist candidate gripped a presidential race like Donald Trump. In 1968, Wallace won five Southern states while spewing demagoguery and bragging “we’re going to show there sure are a lot of rednecks in this country.’’ Nearly a half century later, Trump remains atop…

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ABOVE CARTOON:  (Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News) By Earl Ofari Hutchinson What’s not to like about Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. He brings four personal assets to politics that are glaringly MIA in American politics. That’s class, dignity, honesty and humility. He’s a throwback to a time when politicians actually talked about the issues and…

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By Rahim Islam Contrary to popular belief, America’s Black community, which consists of 47 million people, is not a monolith. Black America, like any other community, is made up of a diverse population that includes various sub-groups including urban and suburbanites, low, middle and high income people, the religious and non-religous, liberals and conservatives among…

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By Rahim Islam The struggle for self-determination for Black people in America has been and will continue to be long and arduous and any interruption can and will seriously and possibly permanently, cripple the movement.  Complicating our efforts is the fact that the clock is still running.  No matter where we are in the struggle…

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ABOVE PHOTO:  Shutterstock By La June Montgomery Tabron America’s Wire Writers Group NEW ORLEANS – Ten years after Katrina devastated New Orleans, it’s time for midcourse corrections in the restoration efforts. The coalitions of foundations, nonprofits and government should pause to ensure that their investments will improve upon the pre-Katrina conditions in communities of color…

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Until there is unity among Black leaders, there will be no true leadership. Everyone agrees that if we keep doing the same thing that we’ve been doing, we will get the same outcome. Thus, creating a collective is the best way to go. But what keeps us from doing this is the distrust of each…

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By Earl Ofari Hutchinson I can’t tell you how many times I sparred with former NAACP Chairman Julian Bond on TV shows and in print during the years he headed the NAACP over the organization’s policies and direction. No matter how fierce our debate, I was always struck by the dignity and passion that Bond…

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