Free Republic

It's been more than a half a century since the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling found that "separate but equal" has no place in U.S. public schools. And yet, true racial equality in our education system is yet to materialize. That's clear from the startling revelations in the latest Education Department report released Tuesday. Entitled the Civil Rights Data Collection, the survey is conducted biennially. This one surveyed 50 million students in 95,000 schools during the 2013-2014 school year. It shows how much African-American and Latino students still lag in terms of opportunities. The disparity "tears at...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called on Muslims to reject contraception and have more children. In a speech broadcast live on TV, he said "no Muslim family" should consider birth control or family planning. "We will multiply our descendants," said Mr Erdogan, who became president in August 2014 after serving as prime minister for 12 years. His AK Party has its roots in Islamism and many of its supporters are conservative Muslims.

I vividly recall the original iteration of the TV miniseries Roots. It was January 1977, and I was 17. Like most young people that age, my life was rapidly growing independent of my parents, who were increasingly consumed by the vagaries of their workplaces. Yet, when the series debuted, it was must-see TV in the Johnson household. We stopped what we were doing and watched it together and enthusiastically each night. We even cheered during the show, notable since we were often too darned middle class to cheer while watching football games on TV. The miniseries cleaned up during awards...

Police in Australia have used pepper spray to separate more than 300 angry protesters as anti-Islam and anti-racism groups clashed in the streets of Melbourne, the country's second biggest city. Seven men were arrested in Coburg, a northern suburb of Melbourne on Saturday after anti-Islam protesters, some of whom were draped in the Australian flag, began fighting with their rivals.

Chicago has some of the most stringent gun controls of any city in the nation and also saw 40 of its residents shot–four of them fatally–by Sunday morning of Memorial Weekend 2016.

South Africa’s parliament has approved a bill allowing the government to expropriate land in the public interest. The new measure will allow a compulsory purchase of lands and give more ownership to blacks. As a result of colonial dispossession and apartheid, 87 percent of South African land is owned by whites and only 13 percent by blacks. The governing party ANC said the law would tackle injustices imposed by white-minority rule. However, the main opposition Democratic Alliance opposed the bill. According to the BBC South Africa, land is an emotive issue in the Southern African country 22 years after the...

While rumors have swirled for months about just who will be taking over the James Bond franchise from current 007 Daniel Craig, one surprising new name is apparently on the top of the list.

After weeks of uncertainty and foot-dragging, the Appeals Court this week made a critical ruling, setting the stage for a potential shakeup in Turkish politics that may block President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s drive for an executive presidency. The court gave the green light for the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) to hold a convention requested by in-house dissidents seeking to remake the party, whose erosion in recent years has played directly into Erdogan’s hands. Leading the dissidents is Meral Aksener, a rare female heavyweight on Turkey’s political scene, whose fortunes may now change not only the MHP’s but also Turkey’s course.

U.S. Special Forces fighting side-by-side with the Kurds in Syria are now just 18 miles from ISIS' de facto capital, Raqqa. American soldiers were seen at an outpost in Fatisah alongside Kurdish soldiers, with some even seen wearing the badges of the Kurdish People's Protection Unit (YPG). Fatisah is around 30 miles from Raqqa, but the Daily Beast claimed American forces were now just 18 miles from the ISIS stronghold.

Charles Barkley is walking entertainment and the brilliant Inside the NBA would not be the same without him and his off-the-cuff opinions (which is a great thing in sports talk, not so much with national policy). But he remains the leader of the annoying #getoffmylawn crew of older players who don’t like today’s game. Barkley was on the Bickley and Marotta on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM last week and went off again on the state of the game. “People think us old guys hate when we talk about it. It has nothing to do with the Warriors’ greatness, LeBron’s greatness....

Corey Feldman has shared shocking details about the rampant sexual abuse he and other young actors were forced to endure during their years in Hollywood. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Feldman discusses how he was repeatedly molested by adult males in the industry, saying these men would pass many young stars 'back and forth to each other.' He also reveals that his closest friend, Corey Haim, was raped when he was just 11 by a producer, the start of a long cycle of sexual abuse that Feldman believes led to his friend's problems with drugs and alcohol later...

A former McDonald’s chief executive has warned that raising the minimum wage will spur unemployment as companies will instead employ robots that work for less. “I guarantee you if a $15 minimum wage goes across the country you’re going to see a job loss like you can’t believe,” said Edward Rensi in an appearance on Fox Business Network Tuesday. “It’s cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who’s inefficient making $15 an hour bagging French fries.” The minimum wage has been a hot topic this spring, with some states and employers deciding to...

Captain America: Civil War is the 897th installment — or something like it — in the Marvel comic franchise. This time round, the superheroes take sides, with the marketing asking if you’re #TeamCap or #TeamIronMan but not if you’re #TeamNeither, as would be most useful in my case. I swear this is the last Marvel film I will see as I never get anything out of them and whatever I say only sets the fans against me, which is not what you want at my age.

Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood claims that young actors in Hollywood are being sexually abused by predatory high-powered 'vipers' working in the industry.. The Hobbit actor, 35, told The Sunday Times that the child abuse is 'probably still happening'. Shocking allegations that top Hollywood figures have been protecting child abusers have circulated widely in recent years. Several industry figures have been convicted following claims of sex abuse and former child actors - including The Goonies actor Corey Feldman, 44 - claimed he was 'surrounded' by molesters when he was a teenager. Anne Henry, co-founder of Bizparentz - a...

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Vice President Joe Biden told the U.S. Military Academy's class of 2016 on Saturday that greater diversity, including more women and openly gay soldiers, will strengthen the country's armed forces. He told the crowds: 'Having men and women together in the battlefield is an incredible asset, particularly when they're asked to lead teams in parts of the world with fundamentally different expectations and norms.' Biden made his speech at the graduation ceremony held at Michie Stadium on the West Point grounds along the Hudson River.

Nelson Mandela's arrest in 1962 came as a result of a tip-off from an agent of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a report says. The revelations, made in the Sunday Times newspaper, are based on an interview with ex-CIA agent Donald Rickard shortly before he died. Mandela served 27 years in jail for resisting white minority rule before being released in 1990. He was subsequently elected as South Africa's first black president. Rickard, who died earlier this year, was never formally associated with the CIA but worked as a diplomat in South Africa before retiring in the late 70s.

Only a handful of mostly sick or elderly Christians remain in the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa, and Syrian Christians fear the forces that have brought that city’s population of Gospel followers to the brink of extinction could do the same for the entire nation. An estimated dozen Christian families are still in the northern city, forced under threat of execution to convert, pay an “infidel” tax or go into hiding. Forbidden from leaving, they also face death from attacks directed at ISIS by Damascus, Russia and the U.S.-led Western coalition. “We are trying to help them escape or stay safe,...

n a post-apartheid context, is a democratic Afrikaner identity possible? Are there other traditions apart from apartheid that can be drawn on in Afrikaner culture that can advance democracy and social justice? These questions are particularly relevant in South Africa, given that in recent years there has been a heightened contestation over Afrikaner identify, driven by a hardening of whiteness. When the National Party came to power in 1948 politician JG Strijdom, the apartheid prime minister between 1954 and 1958 who was nicknamed the “Lion of the North”, demanded “eendersdenkendheid”. The Afrikaansword means a condition of thinking the same. It...

South Africa’s sports minister has announced that he will no longer “beg for racial transformation”, but will start forcing the country’s sporting federations to fulfil racial quotas. Fikile Mbalula said in a speech on Sunday that the cricket, rugby, netball and athletics federations would be banned from bidding for any international tournaments until their numbers of black players improved. South Africans of colour, more than 90% of the population, remain the minority in starting line-ups more than two decades after the end of draconian white-minority rule which prohibited them competing at the highest level. For more than 50 years, black...