Please check out my response to Erica Jong’s racially insulting she wrote for The Huffington Post.
My answer is posted over at Aol. Here’s an excerpt:
Some people are blinded by their own racial arrogance. They are so convinced that their perspective is relevant on what life is like for people of color, that they regurgitate hackneyed perspectives on race as if they are revelations. Writer Erica Jong, famous for books including”Fear of Flying,” published a column in The Huffington Post that stands as exhibit A of this kind of annoyance.
Jong …

We have Nina Turner, a black politician, being caricatured as Aunt Jemima in a black newspaper, the Call & Post. Why? Because she disagreed with them on some legislation. Unacceptable in my opinion and the good news is, I think, most black folks are fed up with this kind of silencing tactic as well.

Read my full article over at Aol’s BlackSpin. Here’s an excerpt:
The decision by Call & Post, owned by Don King, to call-out Nina Turner by portraying her as the subservient, smiling, always-white-people pleasing Aunt Jemima, because she …

The best antidote to the fear induced, mass amnesia afflicting so many of our brothers and sisters on the far right is truth. So I’ve written a post over at AOL BlackSpin that reminds that Republican presidents have made direct appeals to our nation’s children for help with meeting White House goals. Sure there was push back from Democrats, most notably to the address President Bush gave in October 1991, on the eve of the 1992 presidential campaign. Still, I don’t recall and cannot find any evidence of lefty parents …

Please click over and take a look at my AOL piece: Supreme Court Rules in Favor of White Firefighters – BV Black Spin posted yesterday about the ‘New Haven 20′. Here’s an excerpt:
I’ve always been wary of the way the city of New Haven handled the results of its now infamous firefighter promotion test. It never made sense to me. When test results came back, and no black firefighters had scores high enough for immediate promotion, New Haven decided to throw out the results of the test on the grounds …

On June 19, 1865, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas with news that the Civil War had ended and those who had been slaves were now free. There are a number of accounts as to why freedom took so long to arrive in Texas:
Later attempts to explain this two and a half year delay in the receipt of this important news have yielded several versions that have been handed down through the years. Often told is the story of …

I apologize for the slow posting this week. I’m working up a couple of goodies, including some more insight on that CBS poll that talked about blacks and whites feeling better about race relations. In our comments section, reader N-2-Me-I-C pointed out some information that contrasts the studies findings. I am taking a harder look at what’s happening around us, too.
In the meantime, I wrote a little piece (pun intended) about the Oprah KFC coupon mess a couple days ago. Please click on over and have a look:
Oprah’s Free …

I feel calmer and more confident about the path we’re on with President Barack Obama in office.
One hundred days in, our president has demonstrated exceptional leadership, focus and intelligence. These traits, combined with an inspiring work ethic and a strong presence as an engaged husband and father, have confirmed for me that President Obama is the caliber of commander-in-chief that many of us had hoped for.
Not that I agree with the president on everything. I have gnawing concerns about the speed and lack of accountability related to economic stimulus/recovery …

Did you know that April is Confederate History month? Neither did I until I went clicking around for new and interesting stories to talk about here. Not surprisingly, according to Wikipedia and the official Confederate History month website, Confederate History Month is celebrated mostly in Southern states.
Georgia’s Governor Sonny Perdue and Mississippi’s Governor Haley Barbour have both signed a proclamation designating April as Confederate History and Heritage Month for 2009 and city mayors and county commissioners will follow and; The Georgia Senate also recently passed SB Bill 27 officially …

We adults can argue all we want to. We can call each other names, denigrate each other and physically assault each other because of our differences. But you know what? Our children are listening. They see everything and they are modeling our behavior.
Some call it "bullying," but I call it emotional and physical torture. And it was school centered, emotional torture that claimed the life of 11-year-old Carl Joseph Walker Hoover last Monday. This young boy, who played football, basketball and was a Boy Scout, hanged himself when anti-gay …

In the latest installment of its ‘What would you do?’ series, ABC News turns on its hidden cameras to show the world what racism, indifference, compassion and solidarity look like up close in the real world.
The setting for ‘Would you stop racism?’ is an upscale New York boutique. Actors portrayed a black woman verbally insulted and falsely accused of stealing by a white actress who plays a racist sales girl. The black actress is then patted down in rough style, and further insulted, by a white male portraying the security …

Yesterday I put up the following post on AOL and it proved to be much more controversial than I had anticipated:

If you’re searching for an example of what open hearts can achieve, then look no further than the story of Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton.
When Thompson identified Cotton as her rapist in 1984, she was sure she had the right man. But she was wrong. Cotton, then 22, was convicted of raping Thompson and another woman on the same night in Burlington, N.C. He would spend the next 11 …

My AOL Black Voices/Black Spin editor shot me this eye-opening article he found over at Cognitive Daily. I think you all should know about it. The report details a study which demonstrated that black students who participated in fifteen minute affirmations prior to taking tests, narrowed the "achievement gap" on test results versus their white student counterparts.

At every performance level, this chart (adjusted for covariates) shows that black students who completed the 15-minute affirmation exercise got better grades than students who did not (control). Interestingly, there was no similar effect …

If you haven’t heard, Blackbird is a brand new web browser created by a team of black entrepreneurs specifically for black people. Their tagline is "Blackbird: The browser for African Americans." I was a little insulted when I first read about this. I travel all over the web gathering all kinds of information and learning all kinds of things from all different kinds of sources and people. And initially, although it’s now been taken off the site, the market research touted by the Blackbird team made it very clear that …

It’s been said that the way to make sure a meme is widely adopted is to repeat it over and over and over again. During the primary battle between Obama and Clinton, a nasty little internet email gained enough traction to spill over into mainstream discussion.
That email purportedly "proved" that Barack Obama is the anti-Christ. Now it’s hard to believe that in the 21st century, a stupid, fact lacking, anonymously spread internet rumor would impact a person’s opinion of a presidential candidate – but it has.
In fact the …

From My post at AOL Black Voices/BlackSpin:
I don’t live in a different world from any other American. But I experience that world as an individual, through the prism of my identity which consists of many elements including “race” as the concept has manifested in this country. As a black woman, I don’t see the world as a white male or white woman does. Another example, as an able bodied woman, my experiences are different from a disabled person’s. It would be uninformed for me to presume that although I am …