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A teenager was stabbed and seriously wounded in a fight Monday at the National Zoo as the zoo marked African American Family Day. A 16-year-old was arrested and charged in the incident, D.C. police said. D.C. police Cmdr. Michael E. Reese said the stabbing was connected to “some kind of ruckus” that apparently broke out within the zoo and might have resumed at or near the entrance on Connecticut Avenue NW. .....The teenager was stabbed at least twice, at least once in the zoo and once at or just outside the entrance, Reese said. Some of the same assailants might...

..."Contemporary characterizations and depictions suggest that African American males harbor a lifelong disregard for their own personal development, and a lack of commitment to their loved ones and society in general," a societal attitude that keeps them from being helped, he said. Black male youths are likely to grow up in single-parent homes. The boys often don't have fathers residing in the home to serve as role models...Black males, even as boys, are more likely than other male peers to suffer from stress-induced depression and other physical and mental health problems that may result in homicidal and suicidal behaviors as...

it is this devout style of belief and attachment to the black church that is keeping black women single and lonely. Cooper made claims that predominantly black protestant churches are the main reason black women are single. Cooper argues that rigid beliefs constructed by the black church are blinding black women in their search for love. In raising the issue, Cooper ignited a public conversation about a topic that is increasingly getting attention in the black community and beyond. Oprah Winfrey, among others, recently hosted a show about single black women and relationships after a Yale University study found that...

July 2010 unemployment numbers show a distressing fact: unemployment among African American women increased to a staggering 12.9%, a statistic which bodes ill for the African American family since females are the primary  breadwinners in the African American community.  52% of primary wage earners in the African American community are women (compared with a national average of 39% ), so the effects of unemployment are crushing. The July unemployment numbers for all categories of African Americans are dangerously high with  16% unemployment overall, and 41% among African American teens.  The unemployment rates, for African American women, which last month had...

How often does the Office of Policy Planning and Research, United States Department of Labor, produce anything worth reading, let alone a report that reverberates 45 years later? Such was the brilliance of Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan that it happened once, when he wrote his prescient 1965 report, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action." He wrote it on a typewriter over a few weeks and had the publications office in the basement of the Labor Department print 100 of them, marked "For Official Use Only." The report sparked a furor of continuing relevance, as James...

In the wake of Derrion Albert's death, I find myself increasingly disillusioned by the current state of Black America. While African Americans comprise 13.5 percent of the population, 43 percent of all murder victims in 2007 were African America. Of the 43 percent who were murdered, 93.1 percent were killed by African Americans. Was it always like this? The answer is Unequivocally: NO. The disproportionate crime rates, illegitimacy rates, divorce rates, drugs abuse, and disproportionate incarceration rates didn't begin until liberals took over the Black Community in the 60s. Before liberals came and negated the influence of the Black father...

On Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters thronged to the U.S. Capitol to angrily accuse President Obama of taking the country in the wrong direction. A day later, in the shadow of the Washington Monument, many participants at a much smaller gathering -- the 24th annual Black Family Reunion -- said the level of hostility toward the nation's first African American president had little to do with policy differences over health care or taxes and everything to do with race. "It' s not conducive to the coalitions we need to build in this country," said Vera Hope, 60, of Mount...

Bill Cosby spoke about his feelings regarding black people and education in his recent rant called We Cannot Blame the White People Any Longer. Cosby is probably the only person who could get away with talking the way he does because he is well respected among people of all races. “People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around,” he says. “They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk….You can't be a doctor with that kind...

After the Obama-Gates-Crowley "beer summit" at the White House ended, Ronald Walter, a black longtime professor of politics at the University of Maryland, said: "Black parents are using this as a case in point of what they have been saying all along" to their children, "Racism hasn't gone away." Children, and especially black males, "are likely to confront it" from police. (Washington Post, July 30). And on CNN, Colin Powell chimed in with his advice to black children: "When you're faced with an officer who is trying to do his job and get to the bottom of something, this is...

(CNN) -- Wendy Duren thought she did everything right. Wendy Duren says she doesn't get as much sleep but loves her adopted daughter, Madison. Wendy Duren says she doesn't get as much sleep but loves her adopted daughter, Madison. She broke off relationships with men who didn't want to settle down. She refused to get pregnant out of wedlock. She prayed for a child. Duren's yearning for motherhood was so palpable that her former fiancé once offered to father a child with her. But he warned her that he wasn't ready for marriage. "I get bored in relationships after a...

I spoke today with Richard Land, public policy chief of the Southern Baptist Convention—the nation's largest evangelical denomination—and was struck by his praise of President Obama for living out "family values": Not enough religious conservatives are saying this: It's terribly important that [Obama] gives every indication of being a moral man who is demonstrably fond of his wife and children. I think that's important in a president, be it a Democrat or a Republican. That's why I said I couldn't vote for Giuliani or Gingrich. I think [Obama's] making a real difference in this country in his example as a...

In this movie executive produced by Beyonce Knowles, her father/manager, Matthew Knowles, and Earvin "Magic" Johnson, Beyonce plays the Black wife of a Black investment executive. Her husband is relentlessly pursued and stalked by a hot, White (and crazy) blonde temp (Ali Larter). Although the husband never gives in to the White chick's pursuits, she frames him up to make it look as if he did, and he's in the doghouse with his wife. And the Black couple is surrounded by a cadre of brainless and otherwise non-ideal human beings with gaping flaws. There is the lecherous, married White male...

On Wednesday, the National Urban League (NUL) released the State of Black America 2009 report that shows that while the entire country is hurting during tough economic times, African Americans are disproportionately hurting worse. The annual report is a barometer of conditions for African-Americans in the United States. It includes the NUL's Equality Index, a statistical measurement of the disparities between Blacks and Whites across five categories: economics, education, health, civic engagement and social justice. Small step back This year's report shows an overall slight decline in the status of Blacks as compared to Whites, moving from 71.5 percent in...

3 out of 4 black children are born out of wedlock.

... she makes chicken for her children but eats Oodles of Noodles herself... ... She is 29, with twin babies and a toddler, facing eviction because she's $300 behind on rent... ... The little girl, 15-16 months old, wears a striped top that swallows her tiny arms. Her nose is runny, her eyes empty. Hers is not the picture of hunger that Americans are accustomed to seeing. She isn't emaciated, like those living in squalid conditions in famine-stricken countries, but she is underweight and malnourished, often fed chips and sugary drinks instead of milk and formula... ... poor diets lacking...

Tonight on Evil Conservative Radio we were joined by Pastor James David Manning of Atlah Ministries in Harlem. You've heard the hype. Now meet the man. In this first segment he tells us a little about who he is and what his ministry has done in the community, as well as what's wrong with the community he serves. This is a fascinating interview you don't want to miss. He's not just about Obama. We talk about abortion and crime and many other topics in this segment.

Life for the First Children By Derrick Z. Jackson Globe Columnist / December 26, 2008 With some minor irony, the longer version of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" talks about Santa bringing "curly-head dolls that toddle and coo." So far, these girls, who are about to give curly hair an unprecedented place in American history, have done nothing but warm American hearts. Much has already been made of the potential of Barack and Michelle Obama being the ultimate Huxtable family of the old "The Bill Cosby Show." The incoming First Couple says they expect the First Children to do...

My Triumph Over Kwanzaa! Ann Coulter Wednesday, December 24, 2008 Is it just me, or does Kwanzaa seem to come earlier and earlier each year? This year, I believe my triumph over this synthetic holiday is nearly complete. The only mentions of Kwanzaa I've seen are humorous ones. Most important, for the first time in eight years, President George Bush appears not to have issued "Kwanzaa greetings" to honor this phony non-Christian holiday that is younger than I am. It is a fact that Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by a black radical FBI stooge, Ron Karenga, aka Dr. Maulana...

At 14, William Balfour spoke so softly that the counselor at the youth shelter could barely hear him. Depressed and angry, William already had been arrested on charges of heroin possession and possession of a stolen vehicle. He had little recollection of his father, who had been sent to prison for murder years earlier. His mother's efforts to discipline him had turned abusive, state records show. William said he knew his mother had given him up, turning him over to the state child welfare system. "But my daddy didn't," he told the counselor, perking up for the first time during...

What's so wrong about choosing to be "mom-in-chief" for the next four years? To those who’d seen Michelle Obama as a symbol, her announcement that she plans to focus on raising her daughters comes as a blow — a personal blow inspiring “feminist fury” — for which they blame society at large for subordinating women’s lives to everyone else’s. It’s that very belief, more than Michelle’s emphasis on motherhood, which qualifies as “strangely retro” for within it lies the assumption that she is a victim making a sacrifice, and not a fully empowered woman making a choice....

Jamie Foxx is the latest celebrity to stand up and celebrate, following Barack Obama’s victory in the presidential election. “It was absolutely incredible,” Jamie told Access Hollywood’s Shaun Robinson in an exclusive interview. “I’m standing around all dudes and we are breaking out in tears.” When Shaun caught up with Jamie on the set of his new music video, “Just Like Me,” the Oscar winner said Obama’s victory has instilled a sense of “responsibility” in all African-Americans. “I don’t know how people felt but I know how I felt, as far as being an African-American male,” Foxx added. “I speak...

At Savannah State University, where I teach American government, international law and American judicial process, I am constantly waging intellectual warfare against my college students to forsake dependent, slavish ideologies rooted in emotivism, like liberalism, socialism, welfare statism and feminism, and instead to embrace critical thinking in all of their intellectual pursuits. Recently during a mock presidential debate I had organized where I played Sen. John McCain (as if he were a true conservative), I even slammed my fist on the table and in the spirit of Justice Clarence Thomas' grandfather, who told young Clarence as a child, "The damn...

Soon we will vote for our next president, and for the first time in history, one of the two candidates is a Black man. For a year, Essence pursued an interview with the entire Obama family‹to no avail. Finally, this summer ESSENCE became the only Black media outlet allowed a glimpse into the lives of Barack, Michelle and their two girls, Malia and Sasha, when we were invited to their South Side Chicago home. Weeks later, veteran political journalist Gwen Ifill was with the family as they campaigned in a small mostly White western town, and she flew with them...

The Obamas: Portrait of an American Family Gwen Ifill Soon we will vote for our next president, and for the first time in history, one of the two candidates is a Black man. For a year, Essence pursued an interview with the entire Obama family to no avail. Finally, this summer ESSENCE became the only Black media outlet allowed a glimpse into the lives of Barack, Michelle and their two girls, Malia and Sasha, when we were invited to their South Side Chicago home. Weeks later, veteran political journalist Gwen Ifill was with the family as they campaigned in a...

Obama and the Black American Family DonÂ’t Jibe By William Owens If Black Americans honestly believe Barack Obama truly has the best interests of their families in mind, then Black Americans had better pay attention to Obama on paper and not merely on skin. Barack Obama has consistently shown his opposition to several key factors that protect the Black American family: On Gay Marriage: By a large margin, Black Americans widely oppose same-sex marriage. 67% of Black Americans favor a constitutional amendment that would define marriage between that of a man and a woman. A national survey by the Pew...

A few weeks ago, I was listening to a radio talk show when a black man called in to take Barack Obama to task for suggesting that black men were sloughing off their responsibility as fathers. The caller didn’t deny recent data that indicated that 80% of black babies were being born to unwed mothers. Instead, he said that this dire situation wasn’t the fault of irresponsible young men and women, but, instead, was the logical result of rampant racism in our country. He claimed that black American males simply can’t find jobs, and that’s the reason they don’t support...

Congressional Leaders, Scholars Gather to Strategize on Black Male Issues by Jamal Watson NEW YORK — For the third consecutive year, more than a 1,000 academics, activists and political leaders gathered in New York on Friday to strategize on the problems that beset young Black males. The gathering, which was convened by Charles J. Ogletree, who teaches and directs the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard University’s Law School, is part of “The Pipeline Crisis/Winning Strategies Initiative,” a national effort aimed at identifying ways to tackle the many barriers that limit the number of young Black...

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., says that he won’t back down on his “tough love” message to African Americans -– a subject that prompted Jesse Jackson's angry open-mic gaffe this past week. Obama told reporters aboard his plane to San Diego that Americans need to recognize that there is a problem when more than a half of African American children are growing up without a father in the house. “That is a problem and I won’t back up one bit in asserting that that’s a problem that we have to be honest about," he said. Obama’s tough love message to African...

The larger point of Jesse L. Jackson's criticism of Barack Obama -- if not the crude way he expressed it -- touched a nerve among some African American political activists who have been unhappy about the senator 's pointed critiques of absentee fathers and other problems in the black community. Eric Easter, a blogger on the joint Web site of Jet and Ebony, two black-oriented magazines, wrote yesterday that some of Obama's rhetoric "smacked of calculated political expediency" in an effort to win over white voters. The criticism was similar in some ways to the reaction to comedian Bill Cosby,...

IF YOU'RE wondering where Jesse Jackson got the idea to cut off someone's nuts, consider this theory: It probably came from his wife. No doubt Jacqueline Jackson had the same thought when she was hit with the news that her philandering husband had a daughter with a woman who wasn't her. It was in 2001 that word surfaced that the civil-rights leader had had an affair with a Rainbow PUSH Coalition staffer, a relationship that resulted in the birth of a baby girl. Seven years later, a black politician from Chicago not named Jesse Jackson, who's on the verge of...

Barack Obama took a "tough love" message to African American youth, telling that finishing high school is a better route to success in life than an unlikely trip to the NBA or the top of the rap industry. "You are probably not that good a rapper. Maybe you are the next Lil' Wayne, but probably not, in which case you need to stay in school," Obama, D-Ill., told a cheering crowd, brought to a standing ovation at a town hall meeting in Powder Springs, Georgia. The presumptive Democratic nominee was speaking about high school drop out rates and the need...

Barack Obama's gave a carefully calculated political speech on Father's Day calling attention to the problem of children growing up without a father.  In one important respect, Obama was absolutely right:  Far too many children are being raised without the attention, discipline and care of a father in the home.  But in another equally important respect, Obama took the easy, fast and safe path in his speech. The problem of children being born into fatherless homes is, perhaps, the defining social problem of our times.  The starkest possible contrast with the fatherless children of America decried by Obama, was tacitly drawn...

Addressing a packed congregation at one of the city's largest black churches, Senator Barack Obama invoked his own absentee father to deliver a sharp message to black men, saying "we need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception."

RUSH: Since we're talking about Obama, he went out there and he did a Father's Day speech. It was the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago, Sunday morning. Don't you love all these Democrat politicians that go deliver sermons in churches? They're making a big deal out of Obama's speech, as if nobody's ever said these things before. We have a montage here of the Drive-Bys, we have Jake Tapper, we got John Roberts, Kiran Chetry, and Robin Roberts, Jeff Glor all going nuts here over Obama's speech. We've got sound bites of Obama's speech coming up. TAPPER: It was...

Two weeks after breaking with his long-time church after pastors there made inflammatory and anti-American sermons, Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama went to a new church on Sunday to discuss fatherhood. Obama, accompanied by his wife Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia, took part in Father's Day services near their house at the Apostolic Church of God -- a large, predominantly black church in the South Side of Chicago. This was Obama's first time attending a church service since he announced last month that he had quit Trinity United Church of Christ, which he had attended for 16 years,...

Barack Obama asks fathers to take responsibility By Alex Spillius in Washington Last Updated: 12:51AM BST 16/06/2008 Senator Barack Obama has called on black American men to accept their responsibilities as fathers and to stop "acting like boys instead of men". Barack Obama speaking at the Apostolic Church of God In a Father's Day speech at a black church in his home city of Chicago, the Democratic presidential nominee listed the disadvantages faced by single parent families in the community, and urged men to realise that their responsibility as a father does not end at conception. "If we are honest...

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Barack Obama celebrated Father's Day by calling on black fathers, who he said are "missing from too many lives and too many homes," to become active in raising their children. "They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it," the Democratic presidential candidate said Sunday at a largely black church in his hometown. Reminding the congregation of his firsthand experience growing up without a father, Obama said he was lucky to have loving grandparents who helped his mother. He got support, second chances...

Obama talks tough on 'AWOL' fathers By MIKE ALLEN | 6/15/08 2:08 PM EST Talking tough on Father’s Day, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) challenged African-American men on Sunday to play more of a role in raising their children and warned them that “responsibility doesn’t just end at conception.” “Too many fathers are MIA. Too many fathers are AWOL,” he told a huge African-American congregation in Chicago. “There’s a hole in your heart if you don’t have a male figure in the home that can guide you and lead you and set a good example for you.” “What makes you a...

Walter Dean Myers, a best-selling author of books for teenagers, sometimes visits juvenile detention centers in his home state of New Jersey to hold writing workshops and listen for stories about the lives of young Americans. One day, in a juvenile facility near his home in Jersey City, a 15-year-old black boy pulled him aside for a whispered question: Why did he write in "Somewhere in the Darkness" about a boy not meeting his father because the father was in jail? Mr. Myers, a 70-year-old black man, did not answer. He waited. And sure enough, the boy, eyes down, mumbled...

Bill Cosby pleaded with blacks to stop blaming the "white man" for their problems on Thursday, and he reiterated his harsh critique of the current state of African-American culture. "It is almost analgesic to talk about what the white man is doing against us, and it keeps a person frozen in their seat. It keeps you frozen in your hole that you are sitting in to point up and say, 'That's the reason why I am here.' We need to stop this," Cosby said in an address before Jesse Jackson's 33rd Annual Rainbow/PUSH Coalition conference in Chicago.

I haven’t heard one fellow yet say, “I went to medical school all because my gang members encouraged me to do so while we were breaking into the gas station.” While some people don’t want to hear what I’m saying, others have said: Why don’t blacks listen to Bill Cosby and not Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. But I say, don’t pit me against Jesse and Al because they speak the truth. The things that Jesse has come out for and he’s been against, these are things I’m talking about, too. Yes, there is such a thing as institutionalize racism.

"We are living in a new time, where people are behaving in abnormal ways and calling it normal…No longer is a person embarrassed because they're pregnant without a husband. No longer is a boy considered an embarrassment if he tries to run away from being the father of the unmarried child" -- Bill Cosby, speaking to African-Americans at St. Paul Church of God in Christ, Detroit, July, 2007. As Mother's Day approaches, it seems a fitting moment to point out the truth of Bill Cosby's observation. Left unsaid but well understood by him: This "new time" and these "abnormal ways"...

“Men, if you want to win, we can win,” Cosby said. “We are not a pitiful race of people. We are a bright race, who can move with the best. But we are in a new time, where people are behaving in abnormal ways and calling it normal … When they used to come into our neighborhoods, we put the kids in the basement, grabbed a rifle, and said, ‘By any means necessary.’ “I don’t want to talk about hatred of these people,” he continued. “I’m talking about a time when we protected our women and protected our children. Now...

<p>Last summer, in Detroit’s St. Paul Church of God in Christ, I watched Bill Cosby summon his inner Malcolm X. It was a hot July evening. Cosby was speaking to an audience of black men dressed in everything from Enyce T-shirts or polos to blazers and ties...</p>

<p>Last summer, in Detroit’s St. Paul Church of God in Christ, I watched Bill Cosby summon his inner Malcolm X.</p> <p>He began with the story of a black girl who’d risen to become valedictorian of his old high school, despite having been abandoned by her father.</p>

Even as Barack Obama’s speech on race Tuesday morning was being widely hailed for its candor on a subject about which Americans—and, it must be said, especially liberal Americans—are notoriously less than candid, it strived to set, and limit, the terms of this long overdue conversation. Yes, Obama acknowledged, there is vast miscommunication between the races, a constant misreading of signals and intent. Things get said on both sides that, while regrettable, aren’t meant precisely as they may sound to ears of a different color. Obama readily admitted that his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, as a man who came of age...

... pessimism was hard to avoid during the early sessions of this latest economic summit, convened January 5-9 in New York City by the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. The summit's theme, Jackson reiterated time and again, was the "structural inequality" that has persisted in American society long after the end of legal segregation. The main item on the opening day's agenda was the subprime mortgage implosion, its impact on black communities and its larger ramifications for a national economy barreling toward recession. Black homeowners have been hit particularly hard by the mortgage crisis, largely because predatory lenders have been...

Former professional basketball player Jason Caffey had two children with his wife, and at least six other children with women in metro Atlanta, Alabama, Louisiana and Illinois. Professional football player Travis Henry, a Denver Broncos running back with a $25 million contract, has nine children by nine women in four Southern states, including a Lithonia boy fathered out of wedlock three years ago. Caffey, who earned as much as $5 million a season in a 10-year NBA career with the Chicago Bulls, Golden State Warriors and Milwaukee Bucks, filed for bankruptcy in Alabama in August. His wife, who lives in...

The rate at which infants die in the United States has dropped substantially over the past half-century, but broad disparities remain among racial groups, and the country stacks up poorly next to other industrialized nations. In 2004, the most recent year for which statistics are available, roughly seven babies died for every 1,000 live births before reaching their first birthday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. That was down from about 26 in 1960. Babies born to black mothers died at two and a half times the rate of those born to white mothers, according to the CDC...

If Bill Cosby walked up to Virginia Smith today, the Roanoke woman would affably extend her hand. Three years ago, Smith would have given him a piece of her mind. She was among blacks who condemned Cosby for calling out the black underclass for its troubling ranks of unwed mothers, absent fathers, disengaged parents, high school dropouts and prison convicts. Smith, 63, was outraged. The entertainment icon was being "uppity," she thought at the time. She stopped watching him on television afterward. "He didn't understand," Smith said last week, recalling her reaction. She was in the camp that believed Cosby's...