Free Republic

Those who want a better future for themselves and their families will heed his message. Those who choose not to, he doesn’t need. Polls can be useless Donald Trump’s recent speech regarding the atrocious state of urban, majority-black communities was a stellar achievement. As with much of the good he proposes for the nation, someone, somewhere will always impugn his efforts and this occasion was no different. Whatever can be done to hack away at his steely resolve will be done by those who are headed for irrelevance if this man becomes the next President of the United States. The...

Hey media, they're "riots" not "protests" Dear media outlets, All the violence we’ve been witnessing in Milwaukee for the last few days? Yeah, that’s not a “protest.” You keep calling it that, but the fact is you’re just plain wrong. These are “riots.” Ugly, violent, racist, riots. I know, I know. You get all uncomfortable when you’re forced to report things accurately. You hate to use a label that you think will get you called “racist” by the left. God forbid you’re not invited to the White House correspondent’s dinner.

My musical tastes do not include rap and hip-hop, but when Snoop Dogg comments on the "Roots" remake, saying he is tired of movies about slavery and would prefer a series "about the success that black folks are having," he is singing my song. The original "Roots" drew a phenomenal 130 million viewers when it aired on ABC in 1977. The remake, now playing on The History Channel, will probably draw far fewer viewers, just because it is on cable and most are familiar with the story-line. The filmmakers apparently are targeting a younger generation. While there is no question...

White teenage unemployment is about 14 percent. That for black teenagers is about 30 percent. The labor force participation rate for white teens is 37 percent, and that for black teens is 25 percent. Many years ago, in 1948, the figures were exactly the opposite. The unemployment rate of black 16-year-old and 17-year-old males was 9.4 percent, while that of whites was 10.2 percent. Up until the late 1950s, black teens, as well as black adults, were more active in the labor market than their white counterparts. I will return to these facts after I point out some elitist arrogance...

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia ran headlong into the leftist meat grinder by questioning whether college admission of blacks with academic achievement levels significantly lower than the rest of the student body is beneficial to blacks. His question came up during oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas, wherein the court will rule whether the use of race in college admission decisions violates the 14th Amendment's guarantee of "equal protection of the laws" to all citizens. Justice Scalia's questions generated news headlines such as "Justice Scalia Suggests Blacks Belong at 'Slower' Colleges," "Scalia questions place of some black...

As the new school year begins, you might like to be updated on some school happenings that will no doubt be repeated this academic year. After this update, I have some questions one might ask the black leadership. The ongoing and escalating assault on primary- and secondary-school teachers is not a pretty sight. Holly Houston is a post-traumatic stress specialist. She counsels teachers in Chicago public schools and reported, "Of the teachers that I have counseled over the years who have been assaulted, 100 percent of them have satisfied diagnostic criteria for PTSD." It's not just big-city schoolteachers traumatized. Dr....

Video number eight from the Center for Medical Progress has been released, containing segments of material from its previous seven videos, depicting Planned Parenthood's gruesome commerce in infant body parts. This includes commerce in intact cadavers. One segment shows an executive of one of its client firms laughing about it. This latest video has provoked a new round of demonstrations by thousands across the nation to continue to raise awareness about the sickening, inhumane, and yes, uncivilized behavior that is tolerated in our nation. And even more unbelievably, that taxpayer funds (more than $500 million dollars annually) are funneled...

There was a remembrance march held in Ferguson, Missouri that was supposed to be peaceful in nature. It started as such but ended differently. I must first ask, why was there a remembrance march for the one year anniversary of the death of Michael Brown? Was the intention to mark how the community in Ferguson has turned the corner and made improvements to address the real issues underlying the problems in the community? I have no time to play a politically correct game but will ask, why was there a protest march to remember a young black man who assaulted...

No one living has missed the slogan “ Black Lives Matter”! Even presidential contenders have been scolded because of their opinions about this slogan. But what about the economics of the black and brown communities? As the United States continues to become increasingly racially and ethnically diverse, the wealth gap between the races has reached a 24 year high. According to the Pew Research Center, white households today have about 16 times the wealth of black households, compared to having just 8 times the wealth in 2010. There are many reasons for this widening gap, but according to a policy...

Fourteen to one, in favor. That was the Los Angeles City Council vote to raise, over the next five years, the city's minimum wage from $9 an hour to $15. Of course, as Investor's Business Daily tells us, the $15 per hour really is closer to $20. How does it get to $20? Investor's Business Daily says: "Once all the nonwage costs are added, including payroll taxes, paid sick leave and the big one -- ObamaCare's employer mandate -- minimum compensation for a full-time worker could rise as high as $19.28 an hour by 2020, an IBD analysis finds. That...

Hustlers and people with little understanding want us to believe that today’s black problems are the continuing result of a legacy of slavery, poverty and racial discrimination. The fact is that most of the social pathology seen in poor black neighborhoods is entirely new in black history. Let’s look at some of it. Today the overwhelming majority of black children are raised in single female-headed families. As early as the 1880s, three-quarters of black families were two-parent. In 1925 New York City, 85 percent of black families were two-parent. One study of 19th-century slave families found that in up to...

Reflecting upon Ferguson and Baltimore—along with Detroit and other cities—reveals what they all have in common: most of their African-American residents are captives on what some might call the new plantations—urban islands of poverty surrounded by the fetid waters of political disinterest. The new plantations aren’t so new, created as they were by The Great Society, when Lyndon Johnson wrapped himself in the mantle of the brave new world, and despite presumably noble instincts, laid the foundations for a social slavery he would never have imagined. It’s debatable, of course, but when one peruses the photographic journals compiled by Pittsburgh’s...

Back before self-esteem spirit animals and pre-nup voodoo dominated the contents of free-form wedding vows, we had simple yet robust odes like ‘in sickness and in health’ and ‘for richer or poorer.’ The true magic of those words lies in their claim that the deepest reserves of sacrificial love can still be tapped when life’s trials are the most daunting. But there is another angle to consider when ‘for richer or poorer’ is weighed and measured in light of modern data. When it comes to viewing marriage as a kind of lottery ticket, richer stands out as a safe bet....

What if it's not injustice that has led so many blacks across America to feel disenfranchised? What if it's judgment? Last week on two separate occasions guests on Sean Hannity's radio program reiterated Jesse Jackson's decades old mantra that "blacks can't be racist because we have no institutional power." This may be a clandestine way to excuse blacks for destroying cities like Ferguson, MO in the name of justice for Michael Brown, but it's hardly worth addressing seriously. Unknown to many is the fact that blacks hold more government jobs by percentage than any other ethnicity. In an article entitled...

March 7th was the 50th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday," the first attempt by black protesters to march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery to demand voting rights. Their march was brutally halted by Alabama state troopers acting under the orders of Gov. George Wallace. The protesters weren't deterred. On March 25, 1965, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led thousands to the completion of the 54-mile pilgrimage from Selma to Montgomery. Dr. King rightfully described the protest as "a shining moment in the conscience of man." The march solidified support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Prior to 1965, there...

The course of history changes at special moments when courageous individuals step up to take a stand, often at personal risk, on issues burning in controversy. One of those moments was just celebrated with the commemoration of the historic civil rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in March 1965. Another such moment is unfolding before us today. A group of some 150 black pastors, the National Baptist Fellowship of Concerned Pastors, is standing in protest against an invitation from the American Baptist College, in Nashville, Tennessee, to Bishop Yvette Flunder to speak at the college’s annual...

I liked the movie "Selma," though it could have done without the rap song during credits that referenced "hands up, don't shoot," a slogan that emerged from the shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer whose actions the Justice Department recently determined did not "constitute prosecutable violations" of federal civil rights law. As President Obama marched last weekend in Selma, Alabama, along with others commemorating that seminal civil rights demonstration, it became clear that the time has come to stop focusing on marches and take a sober look at what really troubles the African-American community today and...

In April 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. landed in jail in Birmingham, Alabama for violating a local injunction against demonstrations. Sitting in jail, he learned that local white clergy advised against “outsiders coming in,” calling King’s activities “unwise and untimely.” In response, King wrote his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” In the pages long, handwritten letter, he lays out the logic and theology of his activities. He explains that, like the prophets and apostles, he was compelled “to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my home town.” King concludes saying that “…when these disinherited children of God sat down...

On Wednesday, the Twitter hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter began trending after news spread of a multiple homicide involving three Muslim victims. A self described “radical atheist” or “anti-theist,” Craig Stephen Hicks, shot three victims in the head on Tuesday—21-year-old Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salah, her 19-year-old sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salah, and her husband, 23-year-old Deah Shaddy Barakat. Reportedly, the three murders may have been the result of a long standing dispute over a parking space. Murder isn’t really news these days. The bastions of Liberal governance—Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, and New York—are killing fields where the depraved roam unfettered and prey with impunity on the disarmed....

THE FINAL words of his final speech, delivered from the pulpit of the Mason Temple Church of God in Memphis on April 3, 1968, eerily foreshadowed the next day's catastrophe."Like anybody, I would like to live a long life," the Rev. Martin Luther King told his listeners, who had braved a thunderstorm to be there. "Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain…. I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to...