By Special Correspondent Jessica Yee
Right now I’m owning the title/stereotype/image/whatever you conjure up in your mind about “angry Natives” because along with the usual colonial-type affronts to our people and communities, there are some notable racist extremities happening across Canada as of late. Initially I felt like there was just way too much going on [...]

From “The Tea Party is All About Race” by Bob Cesca, published in early March on the Huffington Post:
I was going to open this piece with an analogy about the tea party groups and why they’re treated seriously by the press and the Republicans. The analogy would go something like: “Imagine [insert left-wing activist group [...]

by Latoya Peterson

Yesterday, a headline in the Post-Gazette worked its way around Twitter:  Study finds median wealth for single black women at $5. Most outlets qualified the link by calling it “shocking” or mentioning the five dollar figure was not a typo.
I called up a fellow young black professional friend of mine and told her [...]

By Guest Contributor Aymar Jean Christian, originally published at Televisual

Two broadcast television series the week of January 22nd featured prominent narratives on teenage pregnancy and abortion. A rare coincidence, indeed — or perhaps not, giving January 22 is the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. In Private Practice (“Best Laid Plans“), a rich black family’s 15-year-old [...]

by Latoya Peterson
A quick one, because time is short.
From the “racism doesn’t exist until it happens to me” files,  The Nation points out Michael Steele’s double speak on race:
Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele used to be able to muster a lot of disdain for political players who suggested that criticism of them might be [...]

By Guest Contributor Seth Wessel, originally posted at RaceWire

President Obama says the stimulus saved or created 2 million jobs in 2009. But is the recovery really working? The American dream of good jobs and strong communities is still just a dream for too many. The unfair economy hurts certain groups more, and that ends up [...]

By Guest Contributor Andrew Grant-Thomas, originally published at RaceTalk.org

What a long, strange year it’s been.
A year that began with the loud insistence by some that Barack Obama’s election confirmed the United States as an essentially colorblind, post-racial nation went on to present a series of spectacular counterpoints to that claim – flaps over Attorney General [...]

By Guest Contributor Tammy Johnson, originally published at Colorlines

January 27, 2010
Brothers, sisters and all of those in transition,
I come to you today not as your elected leader, but simply as a Black woman striving for justice, a single voice delivering a few words of caution and hope about the state of our union.
Some of you [...]

by Guest Contributor Aymar Jean Christian, originally published at Televisual

Get ready for reason #573 why The Wire was the best television show of the aughts. In the wake of Scott Brown’s upset in the Massachusetts special election for the U.S. Senate, I’ve been thinking a lot about the cycle of politics. I’ve been a pretty [...]

by Latoya Peterson

I watched the results trickle in from the Massachusetts Senate race last night, and it reminded me a lot the mood Maryland was in when my super blue home state elected a Republican Governor. We felt dazzled too, but that crap brought us Michael Steele, the STD that stays with you.
However, a [...]

by Latoya Peterson

Over the weekend, the news broke that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made some ill-advised comments during the campaign in 2008:
Reid apologized to Obama and a handful of black political leaders after a new book reported that he was favorably impressed by Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign and, in a private conversation, [...]

by Latoya Peterson, originally published at Jezebel
In Latina, we learned all about Sonia Sotomayor’s personal life and style. A new profile in the New Yorker thoroughly probes her work life and relationships to paint another picture of the justice as intellectually savvy, confident, and compassionate.
Running twelve long pages, Lauren Collins’s piece delves deeply into Sotomayor’s [...]

by Latoya Peterson
Alongside the Health Care bill, another major piece of legislation working its way through the United States Congress is The Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity (CIR ASAP) Act of 2009. Designed to rectify a litany of concerns facing those currently immigrating or tangled somewhere along the way in [...]

by Guest Contributor Mimi, originally published at Threadbared

The following paragraphs are excerpts, authored by others, which might offer us (a collective us) an initial entry point into weighing the politics of vintage. The first comes to us from Catherine and her blog Renegade Bean, from a post called “Surrogate Memories From A Time Long Ago:”
I [...]

by Latoya Peterson
Oh brother.  Via Andrew Sullivan, there’s a new political ad out with an obnoxiously familiar message:

The video features various people saying “I guess I’m a racist” and puts up a statistic from the Rassumen reports, stating that 12% of voters believe that opponents of Barack Obama’s health care plan are racist.  This poll [...]