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The Hillary Clinton campaign is currently in the middle of a bizarre tango, attacking Bernie Sanders for not supporting slavery reparations while dodging questions about whether she supports them herself. The issue has since spurred countless thinkpieces from left-wing publications and political actors. As the primary season continues, expect the conversation to bleed into the mainstream media, as it did this weekend in an NBC interview of Sanders. When Clinton and Sanders desperately scramble to win over black voters ahead of the Southern primary states, it's not unreasonable that Clinton will eventually come down on the side of reparations or...

In an interview airing Sunday on Fox's "Media Buzz," Trump told me there is already great affection for him in the black community. "Look, the African Americans love me because they know I am going to bring back jobs," he told me at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. Okay, a pretty standard Trumpian boast. But then he said this: "They are going to like me better than they like Obama. The truth is Obama has done nothing for them." The statement was so audacious that it took me a split-second to react. "Did you just say," I interrupted,...

We've spoken about Ta-nehisi Coates a few times previously. Widely considered to be the voice of the Social Justice Warriors, the author of Between the World and Me seems to be the go-to philosopher of everyone from the Black Lives Matter movement to the most hard core liberal enclaves of the media. Given how poorly Bernie Sanders has been doing with black voters in recent polls, it's no shock that Coates might be rushing to the defense of Hillary Clinton as she struggles to stay to the left of the Vermont socialist. And true to form, he seems to be...

upcoming Academy Awards telecast may be caught between Chris Rock and a hard place. The comic actor is facing pressure to bow out as host of the 88th annual Oscars — with less than six weeks to go before the Feb. 28 telecast — over the mounting calls for boycotting the awards in response to the lack of diversity among the Oscar nominees. On Monday’s holiday celebrating Martin Luther King Jr., both Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith announced they would not be attending the Academy Awards to protest a second straight year without a black actor receiving a single...

There will be two empty seats during the upcoming 88th Academy Awards. Jada Pinkett Smith and Spike Lee announced on Martin Luther King Jr. Day that they will not be attending the 2016 Oscars over the lack of diversity in this year's nominations. As previously reported, Pinkett Smith, 44, initially posted a series of tweets on Saturday to air her grievances. On Monday, she shared a Facebook video and confirmed that she will not be attending or watching the live show. (Last year, only white actors received nominations too.) "I can't help but ask the question: Is it time that...

A discussion of Black Lives Matter and the importance of this movement in terms of criminal justice reform, prison abolition and the next phase of Civil Rights in our state was held at the First Unitarian Church of Providence. The mostly white, middle and upper middle class church members were interested in what they could do as a congregation to ally with and support this important movement. Much of what was presented was in line with the liberal values of those in attendance, but when speaker Marco McWilliams, director of Black Studies at Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE)...

A discussion of Black Lives Matter and the importance of this movement in terms of criminal justice reform, prison abolition and the next phase of Civil Rights in our state was held at the First Unitarian Church of Providence. The mostly white, middle and upper middle class church members were interested in what they could do as a congregation to ally with and support this important movement. Much of what was presented was in line with the liberal values of those in attendance, but when speaker Marco McWilliams, director of Black Studies at Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE)...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- A 23-year-old, Graham Patton, has both eyes blacked out, his nose swollen and bandages all over his face following an attack in South Memphis. "I mean he doesn't even look like the same person at all," Neysa Anderson, the victim's stepsister, said. Police said the attack happened on Tuesday, Jan. 5, at the Pendleton Pines Apartments near Pendleton and Ketchum. According to officers, Patton took a walk outside around 11 p.m. when two men he did not know came out of nowhere. "Something along the lines of 'hey white boy what are you doing around here? You're...

Des Moines, Iowa (CNN)-Sybrina Fulton, mother of the late Trayvon Martin, endorsed Hillary Clinton for President on Monday, calling the former secretary of state the candidate best positioned to "stand up to inaction from Republicans and indifference from the NRA" on gun control.Clinton and Fulton met in November 2015 in Chicago during the Democratic front-runner's meeting with mothers of children who died in shootings or at the hands of law enforcement. The group, according to attendees, discussed Clinton's criminal justice and gun control plans and the mothers presented the candidate with ideas on how to tackle the issue of police...

(CNN)--It's times like this that I wish President Obama were the black militant socialist the right is convinced he is: some combination of young Malcolm X and an even older Bernie Sanders. (I am thinking about the kind of Bernie Sanders we would see if he doesn't become president and totally gives up on the system.) This country could use that kind of president, with black people in fear for our lives during every interaction with police and with literally every American at risk of some American deciding to take out as many innocent people as possible because ... Jesus...

(CNN)--It's times like this that I wish President Obama were the black militant socialist the right is convinced he is: some combination of young Malcolm X and an even older Bernie Sanders. (I am thinking about the kind of Bernie Sanders we would see if he doesn't become president and totally gives up on the system.) This country could use that kind of president, with black people in fear for our lives during every interaction with police and with literally every American at risk of some American deciding to take out as many innocent people as possible because ... Jesus...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/crime/2016/01/06/prosecutor-man-assault-case-hates-white-people/78367016/

TORONTO (Reuters) - A Canadian tribunal has rejected a claim for refugee status from an African-American man who said he feared persecution and police abuse in the United States based on his race, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada said on Friday. While saying he did find Kyle Lydell Canty to have a genuine fear of returning to his home country, adjudicator Ron Yamauchi said that was not enough to grant asylum. A string of shootings of black men by U.S. police over the past 18 months have led to widespread protests and the issue has fueled a civil...

German officials want the world to know the 1000 African and Arab men who assaulted, robbed, rampaged and raped 100 or more German women had nothing to do with refugees. And the Germans will not be talking about it any more, thank you, said German Justice Minister Heiko Maas. “What happened at the main station in Cologne and other areas on New Year’s Eve is not acceptable,” Maas pronounced. “It must not happen again and these perpetrators must be held to account.” Which is what they said last time -- and the time before that. “Making this an issue...

Here's a question worth asking right now: What would happen if 150 armed Black Lives Matter protesters occupied a federal building? This is exactly what an armed white militia did when they took over the headquarters at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters in Burns, Oregon. Known in some circles as #YallQaeda, who are waging #YeHawd, they reportedly took the action to protest the government control of land in the West and the punishment of two local ranchers who refused to sell their land. Specifically, Dwight and Steven Hammond, father and son, were convicted of arson on federal land. A...

Black Lives Matter protesters held a rally Thursday night to protest the lack of indictment in the Tamir Rice and Sandra Bland cases. The rally of about 100 people blocked streets in DC's Chinatown area, which is only a few blocks east of the White House. One protester told local CBS affiliate WUSA9, "I hope to interrupt enough people's New Years so they understand that this is serious. That Tamir Rice should have gotten justice. That Sandra Bland should have gotten justice." Video of the rally uploaded to YouTube shows one protest organizer, identified as Marybeth Onyeukwu, saying the lack...

-snip Park said an investigation by the Union County Prosecutor's Office's Special Prosecutions Unit and Kean University police found that McKelvey, a self-proclaimed activist, participated in a student rally to raise awareness of racism on college campuses on Nov. 17, but left midway through and walked to a computer station in a university library. Once there, McKelvey allegedly created an anonymous Twitter account – @keanuagainstblk – and began posting threats of violence against black Kean students. The first message around 10 p.m. said "kean university twitter against blacks is for everyone who hates blacks people" and a tweet about there...

"Trump is unleashing this sense among a certain group of white men that violence is acceptable." In an op-ed Thursday at The Los Angeles Times, contributor Dexter Thomas (pictured above) declares that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is "a white-people problem" and that the white "community must take responsibility for any damage that has been done, and take steps to correct it." Thomas wrote that "people of color" police their own because "[w]henever a black or brown person does something unsavory in public, members of their community know that it will - fairly or not - reflect on them."...

The leader of a prominent Islamic religious movement has harsh words for Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump. "If Donald Trump becomes president, he will take America into the abyss of hell," Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan said on his Facebook page Thursday. In a video, Farrakhan said Trump will "take America where America is heading" if he becomes president. "If he becomes your president, you'll be just like him. ... When you get leadership that is not rooted in justice, then they begin to make the people just like themselves," he said....

Protests and debates have erupted across the nation this week in the wake of a grand jury's decision not to indict the Cleveland police officers who fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice. Most of that debate has centered on whether police had real reason to fear for their lives, as the grand jury believed. Few have suggested that Rice -- a preteen playing with a toy gun in a park -- deserved to be killed. But that's exactly what Lt. Javier Ortiz, president of Miami's police union, argues on Twitter during a debate with Billy Corben over the case. Ortiz writes...