This could possibly be a parent's worst nightmare: your child fails to return home and you find out from law enforcement it is because he has been gunned down by the local neighborhood watch vigilante. To compound matters, you listen helplessly as he cries out for help on a 911...

Cain's short-lived flirt with the presidential nomination raises big questions for the GOP ahead of 2012. The biggest one being, how will the party attract Black and Latino voters in numbers large enough to swing the election their way?

Despite high employment and partisan bickering in Congress, a recent poll...

For many, big government is a four-letter word, but newly released poverty and income data signal the need to invest in large-scale programs and initiatives that have the potential to turn the country around. Quickly.

The federal government and the administration have to do more, not less....

As Americans take a day of rest to mark the nation's commitment to a hard day's work, Blacks and other racial minorities wonder if they will ever get back on the job.

Recent figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics place Black unemployment at 16.7 percent,...

In 2008, Obama relied heavily on the votes of African Americans and Independent voters to carry him to victory. However in the midterm elections, uneasy about the economy and high unemployment rates among blacks, both groups preferred the couch to the voting booth.

This, however, was not the case...

From welfare reform to single motherhood, images of Black women and girls have often been used to promote agendas and public policies that run counter to their agency and autonomy. A three story billboard placed at the entry of Manhattan of an African-American girl with the tagline "The Most Dangerous...

House Republicans are treating healthcare reform like it's the global gag rule. It is the idea that once you get in power you can rescind a law just because you do not like it or agree with it ideologically. Only they can't. Rather than wasting time out of the gate...

When the telephone rings in the wee hours of the morning, there is a near certain belief it might be an emergency. In Anita Hill's case, however, the call left on an office voicemail system during witching hours was a plea from the begrudged wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence...

According to the U.S. Census, there are enough new poor people in the U.S. to fill the New York Yankee Stadium more than six times over. And since the start of the recession in 2007, over six million have slipped into poverty--that's more than twice the size of the city...

The trouble with Shirley Sherrod is that she told the truth. In a small town speech before an even smaller NAACP chapter, she grappled publicly with the discomfort of what happens when power and decisions that can impact the lives of ordinary Americans are in the hands of individuals who...

A new study by the Racial Diversity Collaborative and the Urban Institute finds that less than 8 percent of nonprofit organizations in Washington, DC are led by people of color. If the DC metropolitan area is a snapshot of the nation, the nonprofit sector is facing a huge and deepening...

Things that have not occurred since the passage of healthcare reform legislation: (1) Obama hasn't sprouted horns and taken to raking the White House lawn with a pitch fork; (2) As a nation, we haven't started to ration food, jobs or money, and (3) Nancy Pelosi isn't holding up the...

Recently Harold Ford conducted his own poll to test his electability and weaknesses with New Yorkers. Would his deep ties to Wall Street turn off those struggling to make ends meet in the recession? Among African-Americans, is he a young leader in the style of Barack Obama? Will it bother...

On the one-year anniversary of the stimulus bill, the administration will do much to convince us that it is indeed working. However, it's going to take more than colorful pie charts and grandiose projections to ease the anxiety and the angst gripping communities. For Blacks and Latinos, relief and employment...

The Administration is mulling over the possibility of another stimulus bill that would focus on job creation. The likely companion to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 comes at time when the national unemployment rate has hit a record high of 10.2 percent. In the African-American community, unemployment...

How naïve of Roman Polanski to think we'd forget that he was a wanted man despite the many films he's made and awards he's won over the last three decades. Time does heal old wounds, but in Polanksi's case Lady Justice has proven to be a patient and watchful woman....

If I received one bailout dollar for every time a poor person was accused of spending hard earned tax payer money on beer, cigarettes, and flat screen televisions, I'd be rich -- or at least as rich as AIG, who coincidentally received over $70 billion from the government to stave...

I suppose it's a good thing Sotomayor's confirmation hearings have been a little boring and uneventful. I keep waiting for the scandalous hidden love affair to emerge, but nothing. No affair, unpaid taxes, or skeletons to derail her confirmation -- hats off to the team that vetted her nomination.

There are only a few things that have not been updated since the 1960s -- the U.S. poverty measure is one of them. As far as statistical measures go, it's the equivalent of using the Twister board game, also invented in the 1960s, for exercise rather than the Nintendo Wii....

If I attend a Black Church and tithe once a week, does that make me a racist? How about if I donate my time to an organization committed to ensuring young black men avoid prison, would that make me a racist? Probably not. For Sotomayor, however, Republicans and Newt Gingrich...