Claude Allen's Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed essay "Untold tales of achievement"

Anthony Violanti's TimesDaily article "Still the King: Even 30 years after his death"

The mighty, mighty Harrison Chastang's BeyondChron essay "A Story of Two Black Men"

Kenneth Cooper's New America Media article "Mainstream to Ethnic Media – A New Career Direction"

Joe Strupp and Greg Mitchell's Editor and Publisher article "Papers Respond to Bonds' HR in Varying Ways"

Diane Majeske's Post-Tribune article "19 black authors traverse region to promote novels"

PR Newswire (via CNN Money) release "Procter & Gamble Unveils 'My Black Is Beautiful' - Inspires National Conversation On Beauty Among African American Women"

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(Freddie Sirmans on Nov 28, 2007 7:57 PM) Just browsing the internet. You have a very, very interesting blog.

Meanwhile, back in my browser?

Scott Jaschik's Inside Higher Ed article "Should AP Add African-American History?"

Jose Antonio Vargas' Washington Post article "A Diversity of Opinion, if Not Opinionators: At the Yearly Kos Bloggers' Convention, a Sea of Middle-Aged White Males"

Tom Zucco's Tampabay.com article "When all the banks say no: Many African-American business owners are underserved by banks. That's where the Black Business Investment Corp. steps in"

Jim Galloway's Atlanta Journal-Constitution article " Candidates duel over Georgia's black votes"

Casey Lartigue Jr. and Eliot Morgan's Washington Post op-ed essay "Talk Radio Can't Handle the Truth"

Dionne Walker's Associated Press (via Washington Post) article "More Black Women Consider 'Dating Out'"

Susan McCord's Albany Herald article "Minority buying power up: Black buying power nearly doubled in the Albany area since 1990"

DeNeen L. Brown's Washington Post article "A Filmmaker's Attempt To Peel Off the Labels: 'What Black Men Think' Tackles Stereotypes"

Gregory Stanford's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel column "Empathy needed for immigrants"

NPR's News and Notes clip "Inside the Black Literary Imagination"

Vanessa E. Jones' Boston Globe article "Race, the final frontier: Black science-fiction writers bring a unique perspective to the genre"

GateHouse News Service's Somerville Journal story "Tufts mourns passing of Gerald R. Gill, historian of Boston’s Civil Rights movement"

Eve Conant's Newsweek article "Black and White: A new study finds that blacks who kill whites are more likely to face execution"

Jennifer Parker and Lindsey Ellerson's ABC News article "
Strategist Says Blacks Are Obama's 'Base': Top Strategist Says Obama Alone Can Mobilize Democratic Black Voters"

Talea Miller's Online NewsHour article "Iraq War Impacts Enrollment of Blacks in Military"

Monica Davis' Kansas City InfoZine article "No Land, No Power for African-American Farmers in the United States"

Deirdre Williams' Buffalo News article "Obama’s candidacy sparks mixed views in Western New York's African-American community"

Carly Zakin's NBC News article "Michelle Obama plays unique role in campaign: Not an adviser, she openly mocks her husband on the stump"

The mighty-might J. Douglas Allen-Taylor's Berkeley Daily Planet article " NPR Initiative Coming to East Bay to Collect Historical African American Stories"

Patti Bond's Atlanta Journal-Constitution article "Georgia's black consumer market booms"

Sue Schultz's Baltimore Business Journal article "Afro-American to open newspaper archive with aid of grant"

Eugene Robinson's Washington Post column "Obama and the 'They' Sayers"

Kevin Boyle's Washington Post op-ed essay "The Fire Last Time: 40 Years Later, the Urban Crisis Still Smolders"

Scott Eyman's Palm Beach Post article "The keepers of black culture: For two African-American bookstore owners, their specialty shops are more than just a business. They are an expression of pride, history and identity"

Afi-Odelia Scruggs' Washington Post essay "What Kind of Black Are We?"

Sharon Mizota's special to the Los Angeles Times "For Charles Gaines, crisis is clarity: In probing disaster, the artist reveals the nature of human truth"

Alec MacGillis and Perry Bacon Jr.'s Washington Post article "Obama Rises in New Era Of Black Politicians: Most Have Similar Résumés, Ideology"

Nikita Stewart's Washington Post article "D.C. Official Proposes Black Caucus"

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Ann Hornaday's Washington Post article "Waiting for 'Action!': Instead of Making Films About the Civil Rights Era, Hollywood Has Made Excuses"

Ellen Gray's Philadelphia Inquirer article "Seeking a superhero" (via the mighty Negro Please)

BBC reader John ole Kisimir's "Identity: Who do you think you are?"

Edward Iwata's USA Today article "Companies ramp up diversity like never before"

Sharon Waxman's New York Times article "The Ready Return of a True Beleiver"

Wesley Morris' Boston Globe commentary "Locks of controversy
Rumors that Angelina Jolie had cut off her adopted daughter's hair caused an outrage. Why is hair such a highly charged symbol in the black community?"

The Detroit Free Press editorial "Take a tour through Detroit: NAACP should leave Cobo, take in city's lessons" and columnist Rochelle Riley's "Unlock life's touchiest lessons: Young people feel thwarted in their ability to explore other cultures and break down barriers," Dahleen Glanton and Kayce T. Ataiyero's Chicago Tribune article "NAACP buries the hated N-word" and the Free Press' "Republicans cool to presidential forum at Cobo"

Gary Younge's Guardian UK essay "Life on the run: The Autobiography of Malcolm X is the defiant testament of a man unafraid to speak truth to power."

Ruth Mantell's MarketWatch article "Minority families face wave of foreclosures: Consumer groups urge more 'teeth' in laws combating predators"

The Employment Policies Institute press release "Summer Job Drop: African American Teens Suffer as Unemployment Jumps"

Malcolm Moore's Telegraph UK article "Forgotten black soldiers in Spike Lee movie"

Hazel Trice Edney's Amsterdam News article "'All-American' Debate Reveals Stratified Black Constituency"

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(Content Black Woman on Jul 30, 2007 11:49 AM) Hi there! I just wanted to reach out and say thanks to you for adding me to your extremely comprehensive blog roll. I am honored. Wishing you Peace. CBW

(Ann Brock on Oct 20, 2007 3:20 AM) i have been a regular to your blog for sometime now. it is a good site, with a great blogroll will you please add me to the webroll? Thank You

Audra D.S. Burch's Miami Herald article "Afro-Latin Americans: A rising voice" (with comments and related content)

Mike Gross' Lancaster Online commentary "The economics of baseball and race"

Howard W. French's International Herald Tribune article "Tattered French African empire looks toward China"

Warren Brown's indispensable Washington Post article "The Potholes of Multicultural Marketing"

Dionne Walker's Associated Press (via Washington Post) article "Loving Reflects on Interracial Marriage"

(special shoutout to Dr. Steve B's DailyKos diary "White Kossacks Should Read Some Black Blogs")

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(DanTresOmi on Jun 25, 2007 6:36 PM) thanks for the Burch article, appreciate it.

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Yet for others, this change represented a dramatic shift in a university administration that has not always been welcoming to the existence of a department focused on “black studies.” Throughout the late seventies and early eighties, the Afro-American Studies department had to fight not only to teach courses on African subjects but also simply to stay alive. For these early advocates, this name change was a long time coming. [...]

| Get up on the rest of Kimberly E. Gittleson's Harvard Crimson article "African Studies Survives Rocky Years of Early Eighties"

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post title from the Arcade Fire's "Haiti" (via Wikipedia)

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Slant Truth: You were one of the first outspoken Black political bloggers I discovered.

Skeptical Brotha: His passionate defense of truth and progressive values set him apart as a blogger of heft and of heart. His passing is a tremendous loss for us and I extend my profound condolences to his family and to all those who knew and loved him.

Brownfemipower: His blog was actually the first blog I ever read–I was devastated by Hurricane Katrina and went to their site to get up to date, on the ground coverage.

Political Sapphire: [...] In my three years on the 'Net, I have seen over and over through a variety of dust-ups that a major condition which the Left blogosphere imposes on Black bloggers as a prerequisite for acceptance is that we can't really be "Black"; i.e. cannot state our perspective and attribute it to actually having lived lives as Black people in this world, a state that no matter how utopian your outlook is presently different than it is for "the default", i.e. white people. And certainly not loudly. Indeed, the ready use of the trope that "nobody knows your color on the Internet" by white liberals routinely, even if unwittingly, sends a very real message to many Black bloggers new and aspiring (as it did to me, at first) that our true perspectives are simply not welcome. That the uniqueness of a third eye perspective, or voice may indeed be a strike against us, particularly if our perspectives don't line up with the orthodoxy that passes for progressive thought on the 'Net these days. It's the ultimate message, which bluntly most of us already get in the real world anyway: if you want survive, and succeed, you must be prepared to be absorbed into a Black-less Borg and become "the default". You aren't really Black, anymore. Or at least, you'd better pretend you're not. [...]

J's Theater: [...] One other element of his blog that I enjoyed was the periodic recipes: I never tried any of the ones that he and Jen posted, but I thought the recipe-posting was an interesting idea. Farewell, and safe journeys to wherever the best bloggers go!

Culture Kitchen: [...] Steve not only made blogging look easy with his obscenely long posts of quality news dissection. He made it easy to be black online. And that's what made him so brilliant, that he never, ever gave up on his negritude.

There's a lot of us negros and latinos online but on the political side of the spectrum and 5-6 years ago, not so much. [...]

Baldilocks: [...] When one's ideological opponent dies, it's sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to say nice things about him/her. However, the nicest thing that I can say about Steve is that I wish that he hadn't died so young and suffered so much along the way.

Go with God (hopefully), Steve.

cross-posted from Blackosphere

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“When you look at our shows that really work, we get a sizable percentage of the population. We are the No. 1 show in black households. We did a fund-raiser after Katrina and raised $113 million, so there was a strong connect to our programming.” [...]

| Go back for the rest of Geraldine Fabrikant's New York Times article "At BET, Fighting the Rerun"

Also useful: Tom Umstead's Multichannel News blog post "Black Family Channel: Big Loss," which notes that "[n]early one-quarter of all cable revenue comes from African-American homes, according to BET, and yet less than 1% of the industry’s video channels target that audience," and the Center for Creative Voices in Media's take.

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(Glen on May 28, 2007 5:59 PM) I stopped watching BET many years ago because the programming didn't speak to me. To much of the same rehashed bible thumping booty shaking stuff. I feel that there is more to the black community than that. I refuse to support something simply because black people put it out.

(Blackwomb.blospot.com on May 30, 2007 8:30 PM) I don't know what is worse: BET (or, the Devil in Blackface)or a hundred other white-washed channels.

In all of these states, blacks represent barely 1 percent of the population. My guess is that these states, despite their lack of ethnic diversity, have a strong independent entrepreneurial streak. They thrive on smaller businesses and specialized services and products. [...]

| That's what jumped out at me in Leigh Donaldson's Maine Today article "Black-owned businesses thrive in country and state"

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| Go back for the rest of Center for Genetics and Society director Osagie K. Obasogie's Alameda Times-Star op-ed "Oprah's unhealthy mistake," and then make time for his Bioethics Forum essay "Racial Alchemy: Bioethics and the Skin Tone Gene"

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(leslie on Jun 13, 2007 12:30 PM) This reminds me of what Claude Steele said in a PBS interview: What's John Henry-ism? John Henry-ism is a term that a colleague of mine, Sherman James at the University of Michigan, has used to describe a syndrome of high blood pressure among American blacks. He uses a sample of blacks in North Carolina who he has given this name to. And you remember John Henry-ism is an old fable in which John Henry is a steel driving man and he competes with the steam-driven pile driver to see who can drive the most stakes in this railroad construction. And they go at it, the steam-driven machine and John Henry in another track. And they go at it for days and days and days and finally, John Henry wins. He drives one more stake before this machine sputters to a stop. But as he drives that stake he drops dead. Part of being black is having to deal with an extra burden. Part of the heroism of African Americans is struggling against that extra burden. But there's a price to pay. There's often a price to pay. And I think that's what that term captures. To function in a society where you have to contend with the prospects of being stereotyped and negatively treated in very important domains of life, that's an extra burden and there is going to be--you can and should struggle as valiantly as you can against it--a price to pay and it certainly isn't to say that that's fair.

It's not alone. Nationwide, blacks and Latinos comprise just 4 percent of orchestras. Scores of highly trained musicians compete for few spots. [...]

| Those paragraphs caught my eye in Janelle Gelfand's Cincinnati Enquirer article "Lack of color at the classics," but please don't stop there.

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"We want to have a national footprint. There are no national brick-and-mortar African American businesses. You can go from cable companies or store to store and buy Ebony and Black Enterprise magazines, but I don't know where you can walk into an African American bank in Washington, New York, Boston, Charlotte and Richmond." (WaPo)

[...] The number of people in similar straits is rising today with the shifting populations of a globalized world. The emergence of new democracies is also a factor, particularly in Africa, where the granting or removal of citizenship is used as a political weapon.

By the most common count, there are 15 million stateless people in the world, but by its nature, this is a number nobody can know for certain. [...] (NYTimes)

"It's kind of hard to be out on campus and still be successful. As an out gay man, if I wanted to pledge, that door is pretty much shut to me. That's just the way it is." (WaPo)

"Black children really need black dolls. She wanted us to know there was nothing wrong with the way we looked, that we were just as beautiful as the blonde-haired, blue-eyed dolls." (BosGlobe)

[...] Sunday morning is still the most segregated time for America, but many churches will find themselves temporarily integrated by visits from various candidates of all races and their surrogates during election season. Obama shouldn't be expected to abandon his minister to appease political foes, but at the same time it's important he convince voters his preacher is a spiritual adviser and nothing more.

In the black church, your pastor is the considered the leader of your flock; if Obama wants to get to the White House, he will have to learn how to be a shepherd on his own. (JS Online)

"My first choice would be a minority. Because of the situations we've had, the difficulties with the minority populations, we need to normalize and stabilize that so the minority community feels the Police Department works for them." (Statesman.com)

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