African-Americans

By Rashawn Ray | – Unsteady cellphone footage follows a jogger – an apparently young, black man – as he approaches and attempts to run around a white pickup truck parked in the middle of a suburban road. Moments later he lies dead on the ground. The killing of Ahmaud Arbery took place on Feb. […]

African-Americans

African-Americans, Victimized by U.S. Racism and Classism, are now preyed on by Coronavirus

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The coronavirus appears to be striking African-Americans at far higher rates than white Americans, write Reis Thebault, Andrew Ba Tran and Vanessa Williams at WaPo. Given that African-Americans are on average younger than whites, they should have fewer cases. But other causes are overriding the youth advantage. The median age […]

African-Americans

Trump admits that Easy Voting would Defeat Republicans. That’s because they’ve made Their Base White and Evangelical

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Colin Kalmbacher at Law&Crime surveys reactions to Trump’s admission in an interview on Fox News that a mail-in ballot program that made it possible for the public to vote with ease and increased turnout would keep Republicans from ever being elected again. Voter suppression has not always been a purely […]

African-Americans

Top 3 Myths about Bernie Sanders and Electability

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – 1. There is a persistent meme that Sanders doesn’t do well with persons of color, which seems left over from 2016 when he was less well known. On the whole, persons of color in the United States are more likely to be part of the working class and to favor […]

African-Americans

A Dream Denied: Black Americans mostly left behind by progress since Dr. King’s death

The Conversation

By Sharon Austin | – On Apr. 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, while assisting striking sanitation workers. Back then, over a half century ago, the wholesale racial integration required by the 1964 Civil Rights Act was just beginning to chip away at discrimination in education, jobs and public […]

African-Americans

James Baldwin’s Journey from Engagement with Israel to Pro-Palestinian Activism

Shalom Goldman

(Special to Informed Comment) – James Baldwin was one of the first African American writers to visit Israel. In the fall of 1961, he spent two weeks in Israel as a guest of the government. Baldwin was thirty-seven at the time, and already well-established as an essayist and novelist. He had published his first full-length […]

African-Americans

How Turkish Muslims at Atlantic Records Marketed Motown, Jazz, Black Music to America

Shalom Goldman

(Special to Informed Comment) – To those outside of the music business the title, “The House that Ahmet Built” might sound like the name of a Turkish folktale for children. But for those in the know, the ‘house’ was Atlantic Records and ‘Ahmet’ was Ahmet Ertegun, the great record company’s co-founder. In 1947 along with […]

African-Americans

The Fate of the Nation depends on Dems Turning out the Black Womens’ Vote

Yes! Magazine

By Tasha Williams | – ( Yes! Magazine ) – Turnouts demonstrate that when we are effectively engaged, our work can make seemingly impossible victories possible. A volunteer checks off voters as they arrive at the Beulah Baptist Church polling station in Montgomery, Alabama, on Dec. 12, 2017. Tasha Williams posted Nov 21, 2019 Democratic […]

African-Americans

No African-American has won Office in Mississippi in 129 Years– Here’s Why

The Conversation

By John A. Tures | – Mississippi is home to the highest percentage of African Americans of any state in the country. And yet, Mississippi hasn’t elected an African American candidate to statewide office since 1890. That’s 129 years. John Stuart Mill wrote about “the tyranny of the majority” – the idea that an electoral […]