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Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) - For "reasons of safety", bars are forbidden to serve "blacks"" and Mongolians or place tables in the street. Street musicians are being banned, and so is buying medicines containing "stimulants" without a prescription. Prohibitions are on the rise for the Olympic capital, while the first leaks reveal a grandiose fireworks display for the inauguration. Bar owners around the Workers' Stadium in downtown Beijing say that public security officials are telling them not to let in "blacks" and Mongolians, and many of them have even had to sign a pledge. The official reason is the fight against drugs...

Decades of white flight transformed America's cities. That era is drawing to a close. In Washington, a historically black church is trying to attract white members to survive. Atlanta's next mayoral race is expected to feature the first competitive white candidate since the 1980s. San Francisco has lost so many African-Americans that Mayor Gavin Newsom created an "African-American Out-Migration Task Force and Advisory Committee" to help retain black residents. "The city is experiencing growth, yet we're losing African-American families disproportionately," Mr. Newsom says. When that happens, "we lose part of our soul." For much of the 20th century, the proportion...

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) - For "reasons of safety", bars are forbidden to serve "blacks"" and Mongolians or place tables in the street. Street musicians are being banned, and so is buying medicines containing "stimulants" without a prescription. Prohibitions are on the rise for the Olympic capital, while the first leaks reveal a grandiose fireworks display for the inauguration. Bar owners around the Workers' Stadium in downtown Beijing say that public security officials are telling them not to let in "blacks" and Mongolians, and many of them have even had to sign a pledge. The official reason is the fight against drugs...

Conversions to Judaism among African-Americans are growing in a way that could affect the presidential election. Atlanta - Like many of the growing numbers of Protestant blacks in America and Africa converting to Judaism, Elisheva Chaim grew up believing she had a "Jewish soul." As a black woman and a Baptist in the South, that was a peculiar, somewhat troubling realization. But when she turned her doubts about Christianity into a search for answers, the truth became evident: She had to go deeper than the Old Testament. She had to convert. "It's odd to see black people convert to Judaism,...

Do not say black and white Americans live in the same world or you will feel the wrath of Whoopi Goldberg. That is what Elisabeth Hasselbeck discovered on the July 17 edition of "The View." Upon suggesting that, Whoopi reduced Elisabeth to tears. On the news of Jesse Jackson’s use of the "n" word, the conversation quickly developed into the double standard involved between a white and black person’s use of the word. Sherri Shepherd and Whoopi Goldberg admitted there is a double standard, but added there should be. Sherri Shepherd said she uses the word "as a term of...

The Million Mom Marcher-types would have you believe that guns are just nasty – the playthings of rednecks and brutes, and certainly of no use to decent people. But Col. Colt's revolver earned the nineteenth-century nickname "the equalizer" for good reason. As a weapon of self-defense, it ended the age of brawn and put clerks and school-teachers on a par with bruisers for the first time since ... well, ever. With a loaded pistol in hand, the frailest woman could fend off the meanest thug, and a black sharecropper might persuade a racist mob to play nice – somewhere else....

Heading into the first election in which an African-American will be a major-party presidential nominee, Americans are sharply divided by race, with blacks and whites holding vastly different views of Sen. Barack Obama, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. The results of the poll, conducted during a campaign in which race has been a constant if not always overt issue, suggest that black voters are highly enthusiastic about Obama’s groundbreaking candidacy but do not see it as evidence of significant improvement in race relations. After years of growing political polarization, much of the divide in American politics...

For decades, critics of affirmative action have contended elite colleges, in their zeal to form racially diverse student bodies, have discriminated against top white applicants. In a twist on that long-running feud, federal authorities are investigating an allegation that Princeton University discriminates against Asian-American applicants by accepting black and Hispanic students with lower entrance scores. At the heart of both arguments lies the question of whether and how colleges should consider race when choosing a class. The Supreme Court has ruled race can be a factor in the process, though racial quotas have long been declared unconstitutional. Critics say admission...

ST. LOUIS Sen. Barack Obama declared Saturday to a roaring crowd of religious African-Americans at the America's Center that they should have no doubt of his commitment to his Christian faith, his nation or his political principles. In an address filled with religious and patriotic imagery, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president told delegates attending a national conference here of the African Methodist Episcopal Church that his career and his life revolved around his belief that "I won't be fulfilling the Lord's Will unless I'm doing the Lord's work.'' That commitment would continue to influence his performance and his politics...

The Coatesville Police Department continues to receive reports of black city residents robbing, assaulting and raping Hispanic immigrants, according to Police Chief William Matthews. And, if the activity is not stopped, police say it could trigger the formation of violent Hispanic gangs as a type of cultural protection. With the city's black community, growing immigrant population - many of whom do not speak English - combined with the city's social issues, "It's not long before you have black-on-brown crime," said Matthews. "And we're seeing the beginning of that." Matthews, who first spoke publicly about the problem last fall, spoke candidly...

The message of my last book, "White Ghetto", is that the social chaos in inner city black communities is symptomatic of the cultural pathology gripping the nation as a whole. Inner city black American life is a leading indicator of American culture and a product of the ascendance of materialism and relativism. Blacks have been first because they have been the most exposed and vulnerable. When 20 percent of black babies were born to unwed mothers in the 1960s, this was sufficiently outside the national norm to be perceived as a uniquely black problem. But today, as the black rate...

WASHINGTON: Barack Obama's political success might claim an unintended victim: affirmative action, a much-debated policy that he supports. Already weakened by several court rulings and state referendums, affirmative action now confronts a challenge to its very reason for existing. If Americans make a black person the leading contender for president, as nationwide polls suggest, how can racial prejudice be so prevalent and potent that it justifies special efforts to place minorities in coveted jobs and schools? "The primary rationale for affirmative action is that America is institutionally racist and institutionally sexist," said Ward Connerly, the leader of state-by-state efforts to...

Any discussions about the terms used to describe African Americans as a group must begin by understanding the historical context within the United States in which these terms were used. It is a history that encompasses more than 300 years, when Blacks were brought to the United States against their will. During the subsequent three centuries, many terms were used to describe African Americans as a group in the United States. During the 1950s and 1960s, common terms "negro" and "colored" were used, often disparagingly. Today, these two terms are unacceptable and are almost never heard, with the exception of...

An open letter to the Rev. Jesse Jackson, re: Don Imus Frankly, Jesse, I don’t give a damn what Imus said now. Frankly, Jesse, I’m fed up with the double standard that’s been imposed in America for the last twenty years. And I’m not talking about the old double standard whereby randy guys such as you were considered cool when you bedded down and impregnated some female not your wife and the poor female was considered a tramp. Frankly, Jesse, I’m also fed up with the fact you, and Reverend Al, and Reverend Wright, and a slew of other Black...

I guess the desire for a black president is so compelling, that some black Republicans are considering voting for Obama. If you are a bona fide Republican, you'd be giving up a lot of your principles to vote for a left-wing whacko like Obama. Black Republicans already get a lot of grief because they struggle against the slavery traps of the Democrat Party. They are already classed as traitors to their race because they refuse to accept the chains of socialism. Black Republicans have already suffered enough abuse so why weakly surrender to a plainly inferior presidential candidate like Obama,...

Oklahoma City (AP) -- J.C. Watts thinks the uproar over statements by Barack Obama's one-time pastor illustrates the need for a national black TV news channel. Watts, who hopes to get one running by the summer 2009, tells The Associated Press that the voice of blacks is often missing from political debates, including the one over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. "We hope to be the single destination for reliable, credible, informational resources for the African-American community," Watts says. "The critical thing is to allow the community to create a platform to be involved in the economic, social and political debates...

How black is too black? Millions of African-Americans celebrated Barack Obama’s historic victory, seeing in it a reflection — sudden and shocking — of their own expanded horizons. But whether Mr. Obama captures the White House in November will depend on how he is seen by white Americans. Indeed, some people argue that one of the reasons Mr. Obama was able to defeat Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was that a large number of white voters saw him as “postracial.” In other words, Mr. Obama was black, but not too black. But where is the line? Does it change over time?...

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who wrapped his party’s presidential nomination just this week, is already besieged by liberal constituencies demanding that he cut military spending to boost social programs. Two influential liberal groups have sent the presumptive Democratic nominee a letter pressing him to support cuts to defense programs to pay for universal preschool, relief for Americans facing foreclosure on their homes and expanded benefits for military veterans. The demands carry weight because the groups, the Black Leadership Forum and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), represent two constituencies that are important to Obama’s political strategy: blacks and...

Years ago, when Jack Greenberg left the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to become a professor at Columbia University, he announced that he was going to make it a point to hire a black secretary at Columbia. This would, of course, make whomever he hired be seen as a token black, rather than as someone selected on the basis of competence. This reminded me of the first time I went to Milton Friedman's office when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago back in 1960, and I noticed that he had a black secretary. This was four years...

A spurt of violence in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn has left residents wondering if the racial tensions of the past are making a return to the neighborhood, which saw anti-Semitic riots by blacks in August 1991. Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood has seen more cops on the street recently. The first incident in the recent upswing, in which a young black man was badly beaten by Jewish youths, was followed by an attack on a Jewish teenager as he rode his bike a few weeks later. Angry Jewish residents have since taken to the streets with signs reading: "Jewish...

"We, African American citizens of the United States, declare and assert: Whereas in the early 1600's 20 African men and women were landed in Virginia from a Dutch ship as slaves and from that tiny seed grew the poisoned fruit of plantation slavery which shaped the course of American development, Whereas reconciliation and healing always begin with an apology and an effort to repay those who have been wronged, Whereas the Democratic Party has never apologized for their horrific atrocities and racist practices committed against African Americans during the past two hundred years, nor for the residual impact that those...

Current Issue : Feature Stories POLITICOS TURNED PROFESSORS by Jamal Watson May 15, 2008, Former politicians are turning down lucrative job offers elsewhere to teach students who are interested in, but sometimes cynical about, the political process. While John F. Street, a former two-term Philadelphia mayor, chose to teach at Temple University because of his longstanding relationship with the school, he says he is impressed with the institution’s commitment to the community. Not long after John F. Street had closed one chapter in a long career as a powerful force in Philadelphia politics, he embarked on another chapter. This time,...

NEW YORK (CBS) ― Police are mobilizing a massive presence in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn in the wake of increased tension between black and Jewish communities. Leaders from both communities have come together recently to preach cooperation among residents of the neighborhood where blacks and Hassidic Jews live side by side. But recent violence has showed that religion and race don't always mix. "I definitely feel [like there's unrest] because I see it everyday. I'm around here a lot and that's what I'm hearing," said Crown Heights resident Anthony Rios. Another resident, Joe Morgenstein, agreed, saying he hears...

Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Keynote Speaker for International Detroit Black Expo (IDBE) Buy Black Weekend II Ecumenical Prayer Service DETROIT--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright will be the keynote speaker for the International Detroit Black Expo (IDBE) Buy Black Weekend II Ecumenical Prayer Service. The service will be held at the Fellowship Chapel in Detroit on Wednesday, June 4 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. This awe-inspiring ceremony, hosted by metro Detroit’s faith-based leaders, will be an evening to promote unity and harmony within the African-American community. Dr. Wright is the Senior Pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ in...

Both the race for the U.S. presidency and the race of one of the candidates have now become the main focus of many Americans. This is truly an exciting year in national politics and one that will determine just how far America has come in bridging the racial divide. When women state that they will vote for Hillary Clinton because she is a woman, there is no great outcry. But, somehow, when blacks state that they will vote for Barack Obama because of his partial African heritage, all of a sudden it becomes a negative issue. In 1980, when I...

elf-appointed Elder, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, spoke out in Chicago this week on the Rev. Wright controversy. Desmond Tutu believes that Wright says the things that all black Americans want to say... Really? The Chicago Tribune and LGF Quick Links reported: "You are a crazy country," Tutu, 76, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, said in an interview with the Tribune. "You're a country that has I think some of the most generous people I've ever come across in the world." But he chided Americans for getting "very, very upset" with the pastor of Sen. Barack Obama,...

Desmond Tutu: Equality of U.S. blacks an 'illusion' By Storer H. Rowley Tribune reporter May 14, 2008 South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu weighed in on the presidential campaign Tuesday in Chicago, praising America's ability to produce the first viable African-American presidential candidate while describing the nation as haunted by a racial divide that still offers blacks what he called only "the illusion of equality." "You are a crazy country," Tutu, 76, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, said in an interview with the Tribune. "You're a country that has I think some of the most generous people I've...

Earlier this month, at a Los Angeles event for the national African-American fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi, the keynote speaker launched into an anti-Semitic tirade – directed at the fraternity’s guest of honor. The shocking episode shows just how far we’ve strayed from the original vision of the civil rights movement – and how far we have yet to travel to realize that vision. The guest of honor, Daphna Ziman, an Israeli-American woman, had just received the Tom Bradley Award for generous philanthropy and public service. But instead of praise, the Rev. Eric Lee berated her. “The Jews,” he claimed, “have...

SOUTH LOS ANGELES Four people were arrested and a school went on lockdown after a fight between black and Hispanic students raged, according to authorities. Police were sent to Locke High School shortly after 1 p.m. Friday afternoon. The fight allegedly involved some 600 students.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A fight at a troubled South Los Angeles high school escalated into a campuswide brawl involving as many as 600 students before it was quelled by police officers in riot gear. The melee, which students said was between rival black and Hispanic gangs and started around noon on Friday, forced the authorities to shut down the school, Locke High, and keep students in their classrooms. After restoring order, they rounded up those involved and separated them, holding Hispanic students in the gymnasium and black students in another room.

One of the unwritten codes for white teachers teaching in public schools has been that when it comes time to discipline a black student, the task should be left to another black teacher or administrator. This is to avoid the possibility that the student might mistake the discipline for just another display of the Eurocentric-White-Power-That-Rules-the-World-and-Keeps-All-People-of-Color-Enslaved-Hegemony. Sometimes, however, a white teacher needs to make requests in the classroom, like telling a poor, disadvantaged student to turn off the blaring music on his iPod. There are classes and workshops for teachers on how to do this “sensitively.” While being interviewed on National...

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I was shocked and saddened to hear my 80 year old black father say he thought Rev. Jeremiah Wright spoke the truth about America. My dad is a great man. He was one of the first blacks to break the color barrier in the Baltimore Fire Department where he suffered segregation and humiliating treatment. He won Firefighter of the Year two times. Married with four children, he worked full time and attended college. He is a doctor of theology. He authored a book and still pastors numerous churches. He truly believes in love and faith in God. My dad would...

It is with no pleasure that I put in writing what I have long believed: Though many individual liberals have only goodwill toward black Americans, the liberal world since the late 1960s (i.e., after the major civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s) has done incalculable damage to black America and to race relations in this country. Whether out of guilt or because of its own racist views (i.e., the unspoken but regularly implied belief in the inferiority of African-Americans), the left-of-center's general attitude toward black Americans has been that they cannot be judged by the same standards as others. From...

Democratic Party leaders claim to care about the little guy. They also claim to be champions of minorities. Neither of those assertions is true. I will prove it to you with a couple of case studies. Recently, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a major supporter of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's bid for the Democratic Party presidential nomination over Barack Hussein Obama, gave a speech at the Buffalo Museum of Science. He talked about joblessness – a hot topic in Buffalo. If you have visited Buffalo recently, you know it is a severely depressed metropolitan area. It is depressingly depressed – with...

(ANN) – In a fiery address to the Detroit NAACP convention, retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright admitted that black and liberal leaders betrayed black children. In a speech in which he accused the United States, in general, of being racist, he also admitted that black leaders had forced black children into situations where they could not succeed. Dr. Wright noted that Dr. Janice Hale, a professor at Wayne State University and founder of the Institute for the study of the African-American child. and Dr. Geneva Smitherman, a professor at Michigan State University in Lansing, had demonstrated decades ago that black children...

That, not Wright’s wide-ranging social theories, is what forced Obama to denounce Wright at a hastily arranged news conference Tuesday. By questioning Obama’s honesty, Wright was striking at the heart of the Obama campaign. The most damaging thing Wright could ever say is that he knows, based on his long personal relationship with Obama, that Obama agrees with him but can’t say so publicly for political reasons. Put another way, if voters believe that Obama fundamentally rejects Wright’s views, they might question Obama’s judgment in remaining close to Wright for 20 years. But if voters believe that Obama secretly agrees...

As I traveled the country for my brother John Kerry, speaking with Jewish groups and other communities in 2004, I learned that the most powerful way to show you have listened and understood is to bring the stories you have heard to wider audiences. As one African-American woman in Seattle put it, “I want to hear you call my name.” When Barack Obama delivered his remarkable speech on race in Philadelphia, I felt as a member of the Jewish community that he was calling my name. Speaking with moral clarity about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, he said a view “that...

Nearly 17 years after riots tore Crown Heights apart, the recent beating of a black college student by Jewish assailants has exposed rising tensions between blacks and Jews in my neighborhood. Cops and city officials have quietly gone on high alert, worried that another riot could be in the works. The troubles began on April 14, when Andrew Charles, a 20-year-old sophomore at Kingsborough Community College, says he and a friend encountered a pair of young Jewish men while walking down Albany Ave. about 6 p.m. "One was on bike, one was on foot. They were staring at us, staring...

The subject of race is all over the media headlines. Reverend Jeremiah Wright told it like it is and conservative America could not take the strong medicine. Sen. Barack Obama had to prepare his greatest speech to address the frenzy that was and is taking place about it. Imagine, Black people having to explain to White America that there is a racial problem in this nation. That alone signifies the degree of importance this issue has. Denial can be the worst enemy and biggest problem. Most recently, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had to weigh in on the issue. She...

*In an interview with Blender magazine, Alicia Keys says she believes that "gangster rap" and the bicoastal feud that resulted in the deaths of Tupac and Biggie were created by The Man. "'Gangsta rap' was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other. 'Gangsta rap' didn't exist," said Keys, 27, in the magazine's May issue, on newsstands tomorrow. The singer also says that the rivalry between slain artists Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. was fueled "by the government and the media, to stop another great black leader from existing." The Grammy-winner, who wears a gold AK-47 pendant...

Obama, speaking to a group of supporters in San Francisco, CA. , recently said: "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment...

On his Fox News radio show, Tom Sullivan predicted that African-Americans would be rioting in the streets similar to what happened after the O.J. trial in the 1990s...What if Barack Obama is not -- does not win the Democratic nomination, or he does win it, and loses in the presidential race against John McCain? Is black America going to...

The Black man in America faces a serious economic problem today and the White race’s Christianity cannot solve it. You, the so-called American Negro, with the help of Allah can solve your own problem. The truth must be recognized by the Black man. He, himself, has assisted greatly in creating this serious problem of unemployment, insecurity and lack. Before the Black man can begin to gain economic security, he must be awakened from the dead and gain knowledge, understanding and wisdom which will enable him to follow my teachings. Islam and only Islam will point the way out of the...

As a Pennsylvania voter, I'm disheartened by the identity politics now playing out as both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battle for votes among Democratic Party factions. One in five supporters of Mrs. Clinton here say they won't vote for Mr. Obama should their candidate lose (and vice versa, according to pollster Terry Madonna of Franklin & Marshall College). Only 12% of nonwhite Pennsylvania voters support Mrs. Clinton. Only 29% of white ones support Mr. Obama. Gender and age cohorts break along similarly sharp lines, with women and older voters going for Mrs. Clinton, men and young voters trending toward...

DETROIT - The embattled former minister of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has been selected as the keynote speaker for the Detroit branch of the NAACP's 53rd Annual Fight for Freedom Fund dinner. The civil rights organization says Thursday the Rev. Jeremiah Wright will speak April 27 at the event, whose past speakers have included Obama, Sen. Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton. The Freedom Fund dinner draws about 10,000 people. Wright has been criticized for remarks about everything from race relations to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He recently retired from Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Obama...

By now no one is surprised by what is said by a Rev. Wright ("KKK of A", Israel is a "dirty word", etc.) or a Rev. Meeks ("white people" as "slave-masters"), or that they have figured prominently among Obama supporters. Now the latest is apparently Rev. Eric Lee ("What other kind of Rabbis are there, but Jews?" "The Jews have made money on us in the music business and we are the entertainers, and they are economically enslaving us.'"), one of the designated co-sponsors of a Feb., 2008 "Obama—Get Out and Vote Rally" in Los Angeles, who on April 4th...

Even as he fends off Senator Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination contest, Senator Barack Obama is already turning his attention to the general election, and to an ambitious plan to reshape the American electorate in his favor. Bringing new voters to the polls "is going to be a very big part of how we win," said Obama's deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, in an interview. "Barack's appeal to independent voters is also going to be key." Hildebrand said the campaign is likely to turn its attention and the energy of its massive volunteer army this fall on registering African-American...

SUMMARY: He says: "Who in their right mind, if they were African-American or Hispanic or Asian-American, if they were gay or lesbian, would join the Republican Party?" Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean came under attack for speaking out against conservative gay men and lesbians as well as Republicans of color. "They can't become more diverse," Dean said Tuesday at a speech at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Who in their right mind, if they were African-American or Hispanic or Asian-American, if they were gay or lesbian, would join the Republican Party?" The Log Cabin Republicans issued a statement Wednesday against...

I received a phone call from our daughter late tonight. It seems the mother of an old high school friend just passed away, and she wanted me to look in our local newspaper to find out when the funeral is, on the off chance that she might be able to attend. About halfway through our conversation, she mentioned the following, kind of as an afterthought -- which just goes to show how different mothers and daughters can be in their sense of what is important, or of interest, to tell one another. :) Mandy and her best friend attended...