A grand jury has ruled that the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by two white police officers at a northern Illinois daycare filled with children was justified.
The Aug. 24 killing of 23-year-old Mark Anthony Barmore at the church-run facility in Rockford raised tensions between police and the black community in the city, about 90 miles northwest of Chicago.
Media & women's basketball writer for Fanhouse.com
9:36 AM on 12/23/2009
OPINION - On October 28, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was slammed about a House Judiciary Committee hearing room like a quarterback facing a blitz....
Freelance filmmaker, writer, blogger and Political Consultant.
7:40 AM on 12/22/2009
OPINION - Is the health care bill, as it is, worth the political capital that it has cost the President and the Democratic congress? ...
Co-Director of the Political Participation Group at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund
10:26 AM on 12/21/2009
OPINION - The first decade of the new century has been marked by incredible triumphs, ongoing challenges, and a number of historic moments......
Author and Finance Professor at Syracuse University
9:41 AM on 12/21/2009
OPINION - For the NCAA, the educational mission of their professional sports league is one of the great scams of the 20th and 21st centuries, no different from the Ponzi schemes of Bernie Madoff......
Writer for VIBE, Newsday, The Source, Publishers Weekly, and Giant Magazine.
6:31 AM on 12/21/2009
REVIEW - Avatar is a reminder of the lessons to be learned from indigenous cultures and the respect and honor that must be paid to the environment....
Sports contributor
9:01 AM on 12/18/2009
OPINION - In the ego-driven world of professional sports, it says a lot about a player, about man when all of his teammates seem to genuinely share an affinity for him....
Writer
7:11 AM on 12/18/2009
OPINION - Amid all the sound and fury generated by banking bonuses, left unspoken are the external benefits that those amounts provide to large states....
Editor of BookerRising.net
8:25 AM on 12/17/2009
OPINION - The adoption of China's one-child policy in the US would have a disproportionately negative impact on women of color....
National Public Education Director for Queers for Economic Justice
10:00 AM on 12/16/2009
OPINION - HIV/AIDS conspiracy theories circulate in homes, barber shops, churches, and among activists in the African-American community....
TIGER Woods' wife Elin Nordegren wants a divorce, sole custody and half his estimated £370 million ($671 million) fortune, according to a newspaper report.
The superstar golfer has also reportedly reneged on a promise he made to his wife to go into rehabilitation to wean himself off the prescription drugs Ambien and Vicodin.
A close friend of Ms Nordegren told the News of the World: "Tiger was supposed to be working on getting better and he hasn't done anything. Instead he just went to stay with a friend and says he's 'trying to get better on his own'.
"Elin is livid he hasn't checked into rehab and gotten himself off his drugs. He's acting like a big baby," the source said.
"Now she wants 100 per cent divorce, 100 per cent custody of the children and half of everything. And she won't be changing her mind."
WASHINGTON — Homeland security officials improperly gathered intelligence on the Nation of Islam, a black Muslim group, but government rules were “unintentionally and inadvertently violated” and only publicly available information was collected, according to documents made public Wednesday.
Internal correspondence shows the 2007 report – titled “Nation of Islam: Uncertain Leadership Succession Poses Risks” – was created by an intelligence group working within the Homeland Security Department.
Hours after the report was issued, officials recalled it, deciding the report violated intelligence rules against collecting or disseminating information on U.S. citizens for an extended period of time. It had been disseminated widely over the Internet to numerous federal agencies, state and local law enforcement, several congressional committees, intelligence agencies and parts of the private sector, a reviewing officer found.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for Tavis Smiley, whose experience in public life has been mixed as of late. Let’s be real: Smiley’s spat with Obama hasn’t worked in his favor, and the Wells Fargo thing really hurt his stock value. In spite of recent challenges he’s experienced over the past two years, he remains a meaningful and relevant leader in the African American community. The voices of intelligent, principled and focused black men are among the most important in our world.
Click to read.
by Dr. Boyce Watkins, Syracuse University
Elliot Millner brought it to my attention that Attorney General Eric Holder has been apparently spending a lot of time with Bill Cosby these days. In a recent speech at a black church in Queens, NY, Holder took a page out of the Barack Obama Campaign Catalog and chose to win favors with the black middle class by recklessly bashing away at absentee fathers and returning to the whole "ya'll just need to grow up and be more responsible" argument that allows any politician to explain away a blatant disregard for meaningful public policy. Rather than talking about things that we can do as a society to take our collective foot off the necks of black men, he chose to say that black men are choosing to put the foot on their own necks.
Elliot Millner, who is also in the legal profession, intelligently said the things that I am sure Eric Holder wanted to say. But unlike Holder, Millner is not constrained by the political shackles that come with being an appointed leader in a society that makes a habit of oppressing, destroying and marginalizing black men.
In his speech, Holder said that, "It should simply be unacceptable for a man to have a child and then not play an integral part in the raising and nurturing of the child."
That quote is a nice way of reflecting on the obvious. It's sort of like saying, "It should be unacceptable for a black man to become the Attorney General of the United States and not play an integral part in helping other black men overcome the blatantly racist and destructive justice system over which you preside."
by Elliot Millner, J.D. – Your Black World
Attorney General Eric Holderrecently spoke at a Black church in Queens, NY, and during his speech he gave Black fathers another talking to, stating that:
"It should simply be unacceptable for a man to have a child and then not play an integral part in the raising and nurturing of the child."
Sounds good on face value. Who doesn't think that any man who has a child should play a vital role in that child's growth and development? A.G. Holder is 100% right on that point, and I have no disagreement with him whatsoever.
However lets look beyond the truthfulness of the words. When communicating, there are many other factors to consider other than what is being said. So, let's consider the question: If a person is truly concerned about promoting the increased participation of Black father's in their children's lives, what would that person do? Seemingly, a person sincere about achieving that goal would go speak to the people most in need of that talk, in this case Black fathers who were not being responsible for the children they had helped bring into the world. Although I'm sure it may have been some people in Memorial Presbyterian Church who were being negligent in their parental duties, I doubt that A.G. Holder's message applied to the majority of them.
Dr. Towanna Freeman has a lot to say about why Black People aren’t getting married. In an interview with AOL Black Voices, the leading black news website in America, she was quoted as saying this:
“According to the U.S. Census, 42% of African-Americans are getting married, in comparison to 61% of Caucasians.
There are four contributing factors for this current gap: the evolution of the black professional woman in the workplace; the increased numbers of incarcerated black males; decreased numbers of black males in college compared to black women; and the increased number of single mothers as head of household.
For example, black women are more likely to marry men of equal or greater education and money earning potential. Finding a prospective groom can be a challenge if the black male to black female ratio is 1 in 6 like in many major cities. The workplace and academia are the most probable location to make a dating connection. These are places you spend most of your day and you interact with the prospective and get to know them in a much better way. However, if the number of black males in those environments is too low, the odds are slim for the black love connection. This is one explanation for the increased number of interracial marriages in the U.S.”
Tiger Woods yesterday banned British media from printing nude snaps of himself said to have been offered to a magazine.
But the High Court action cannot stop any lurid photos being published in America. Photos were believed to have been offered to Playgirl magazine and bosses said they would publish them if they can verify they are genuine.
There is no proof so far that the pictures exist, but lawyers for the under-fire golfer went ahead with the legal ban anyway.
The move came as further sordid allegations of Tiger's sex life emerged, with a notorious Hollywood madame last night claiming he hired several high-class escorts from her.
Michelle Braun allegedly provided the golfer with four prostitutes at £12,000 each on six occasions in 2006 and 2007.
And she claimed he indulged in threesomes. Braun named one as Loredana Jolie, a Playboy model originally from Sicily.
She said: "He liked girl-ongirl.
Reps for BeBe Winans said in a statement Tuesday that the gospel star "has been exonerated of all charges of allegations that he assaulted his ex-wife Debra Winans."
His publicists at W&W Public Relations, Inc. stated: "Judge Gloria Dumas of the General Sessions Court for Metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County signed an order on Friday, Dec. 4, 2009, dismissing all charges with prejudice. With this order, this domestic matter is over and cannot be reopened."
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It looks like R. (Robert Sylvester) Kelly is going to tell his story and he's doing it via SmileyBooks publishing.
According to a press release, in the memoir, Kelly, 42, writing with celebrity author David Ritz, will detail the agony of losing his mother, whom he adored.
Emergency crews responded overnight to the posh Florida street where embattled golfer Tiger Woods lives after a 911 call early this morning.
An unidentified blonde woman was transported to the hospital early Tuesday after a 911 call was placed from the neighborhood where golfer Tiger Woods and his wife, Elin Nordegren, live.
(ABC News)
More Photos
ABC's Orlando affiliate WFTV reported seeing a woman being removed from the ambulance on a gurney after arriving at the Health Central Hospital in Ocoee. The ambulance was followed by a black Cadillac Escalade, similar to the car Woods was driving when he crashed into a tree nearly two weeks ago, setting of a firestorm of tabloid reports about domestic strife and his many apparent mistresses.
Witnesses told WFTV that the Escalade was driven by an attractive blonde who bore similarities to Woods' wife, Elin Nordegren, and the car's license plate was one number off from the plate on the car Woods was driving the night of the crash.
Nordegren's mother and twin sister were rumored to have been spending time at the home.
The activity in Woods' Deacon Circle neighborhood comes hours after reports that Nordegren may have moved out and purchased a home in Sweden.
Click to read.
Tiger Woods did not pay purported gal pal Rachel Uchitel to cancel her expected dish-all news conference.
She backed out because she was "scared for her safety," sources told the celebrity gossip website TMZ.
The 34-year-old New York party girl cancelled the planned conference after a spate of late night phone
calls with Woods, TMZ said Friday, citing unnamed sources.
Uchitel, one of three women identified as love interests of the married golfer, "walked away without taking a cent from Tiger Woods," the website reported. "This was absolutely not about money."
Sources told TMZ that Uchitel was "scared for her safety because she knows so much about Tiger, his alleged affairs and a variety of other Woods matters."
"Rachel does not fear Tiger, as much as she fears all the other people caught in what is becoming a very large net," the website reported.
Earlier, Uchitel's lawyer, Gloria Allred, said the leggy blonde had pulled the plug on the press conference "due to unforseen circumstances."
Read more:http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2009/12/04/2009-12-04_tiger_woods_.html#ixzz0YkEXadSK
Today while hanging out with Rev. Al Sharpton in the studio, I found my mind reflecting deeply on the recent drama between Tiger Woods and his wife, Elin Nordegren. In spite of the fact that I was sitting next to the man who epitomizes race relations in America, no one brought up the fact that Tiger Woods is involved in an inter-racial marriage. It wasn't because we were afraid to go there, it was just that there were more pressing issues to discuss.
In spite of the fact that Rev. Sharpton and I discussed everything except for the fact that Tiger's wife is white, one of the callers slammed the issue on the table like a five pound slab of raw chicken. The caller made the old OJ Simpson argument: "Had he been with a sister, none of this would have happened."
While I don't agree with the caller's assertion (we know that marital drama knows no racial boundaries), I found it interesting that some of the black women in the studio smirked and looked at the floor, as if to say, "I hear ya girl." These smirks were not built on agreeing with what the woman said, but rather, on the disappointment and resentment that many black women have felt about the fact that Tiger Woods almost never seemed to show any interest in African American females. Unlike guys like myself, who admire Tiger for his achievements, I know a long list of black women who could care less if Tiger were to take his golf clubs and jump off the side of a 10-story building.
Click to read.
by Dr. Julianne Malveaux
A week or so ago, I had the privilege of participating in a conversation on NPR about college attendance. Sparked by a conversation in the Chronicle of Higher Education, a group of "experts" were opining that too many people are going to college. Too many? Conservative and racially biased Charles Murray (author of The Bell Curve) thinks that too few high school students have the cognition to successfully navigate college attendance. Marty Nemko says it is a cost-benefit thing. Sandy Baum says that everyone should have opportunity and access. Nobody mentions race, but I think it is the elephant in the room. Too many white folks are opining that too many people go to college, but their kids are in college. So do they really mean that too many black folks go to college? Are their objections really about reinforcing a class system?
Here is what we know about the benefits that come from college attendance:
·College graduates have lower unemployment rates than those who did not graduate from college.
·College graduates have higher lifetime earning than those who did not graduate from college.
·College graduates are more likely to vote, and to be civically involved than those who did not graduate from college.
·College graduates are more likely to contribute to philanthropic causes and to volunteer than those who did not graduate from college.
What you need to know about fibroids – Dr. Elaina George breaks it all down in this episode of Medicine on Call. Listen by clicking here!
