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Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson on Friday likened the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer to a “state execution.”

As the fallout continued regarding the NBA’s decision to ban Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling for life based on racist comments made in private and leaked on tape, Jesse Jackson showed up on court before Game 5 of the first round of the playoffs between the Los Angeles Clippers and the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday night. n 2008, Jackson was caught on tape stating that he would like to “cut off [President Obama’s] nuts” for “talking down to black people…telling n****** how to behave.” In the 1980s, Jackson referred to New York City as “Hymietown.” He called Ward...

Jackson’s group, along with LGBT group GLAAD and the National Organization for Women, urged A&E to keep Robertson on an indefinite hiatus from the show, which the network started following Robertson’s comments criticizing homosexuality in an interview with GQ magazine. snip Jackson Sr. and the leaders of the other groups are demanding a sit-down meeting with Cracker Barrel and A&E in the next couple of days. “It is unacceptable that a personality who has been given such a large platform would benefit from racist and anti-gay comments,” the group leaders state in the release.

Ten days after claiming the premeditated lynching of Emmett Till almost 60 years ago was the same thing as George Zimmerman shooting Trayvon Martin in what jurors determined was self-defense, Oprah Winfrey Thursday continued to inject racism into this issue. Appearing on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, Winfrey said, "It's ridiculous to look at that case and not to think that race was involved" (video follows with transcript and commentary): ANDERSON COOPER, HOST: I spoke at length to Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey about the film and about race in America, particularly after the Trayvon Martin case. Here's part of that...

<p>Former Florida Rep. Allen West had some harsh words for nationally known civil rights activists like the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who have remained silent on a video showing black teens beating a white boy on a school bus.</p>

In a radio interview in which he lamented the GOP filibusters and a gridlock in Congress, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he hopes Republicans who oppose the president do so “based on substance and not the fact that he’s an African-American.” The comment came Friday during the Nevada lawmaker’s appearance on Las Vegas-based National Public Radio affiliate KNPR (http://bit.ly/16AheWv), and drew swift response from Sen. Tim Scott, R-South Carolina, who is black. “I hope Sen. Reid will realize the offensive nature of his remarks and apologize to those who disagree with the president’s policies because of one thing...

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he hopes Republicans who oppose the president do so “based on substance and not the fact that he's an African-American.” The comment came during a wide-ranging interview Friday with Las Vegas-based National Public Radio affiliate KNPR, in which Reid lamented Republican filibusters and claimed opponents do everything they can to make Obama fail. … Reid’s comments went unchallenged by the program’s moderator, but not by Newsmax contributor and Conservative African-American columnist Clarence V. McKee, who said there was no reason for Reid to bring up the race issue during the interview. … He...

"There are too many people on the American right who hate the very notion of Barack Obama in the White House...They hate not just his politics but him," says Chris Matthews. Let me finish tonight with this. I said it before and am now saying it again. There are too many people on the American right who hate the very notion of Barack Obama in the White House. It grates on them, just as it thrills – even now – tens of millions of others. They hate not just his politics but him. Think about all the days we have...

I love how the words just casually roll off his tongue, as if he had been saying them all his life. Which he has. But there is no such thing as black racism, don't you know? Using a racial epithet to describe one's political opponents is accepted behavior. Or at least it must be because the only people saying anything about it are those on the right. But even at 83, dressed in a blue bow tie and crisp gray suit, Rangel is relentless toward those who he feels are slowing the forces of progress. House Republicans? Have done more...

The 2012 killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin has led to various rallies, boycotts, and even songs. Now, the NAACP is leading the way in an effort to force legal changes across the United States in an attempt to prevent another similar situation. The NAACP created "Trayvon's Law," a series of legislative policies that aims to "end racial profiling, repeal stand your ground laws, form effective civil complaint review boards to provide oversight of police misconduct, improve training for community watch groups, mandate law enforcement to collect data on homicide cases involving non-whites, and address the “school to prison pipeline,...

TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Rick Scott on Wednesday accused Rev. Jesse Jackson of insulting Floridians with a series of reckless and divisive statements about the state and its “stand your ground” self-defense law.While visiting the state Capitol Tuesday, Jackson talked about efforts to repeal the law and used the phrase “Selma of our time” — a reference to civil rights marches in Alabama that helped prompt change in the 1960s.In a July 18 exchange on CNN, Jackson talked about an economic boycott to “isolate Florida as a kind of apartheid state given this whole stand your ground laws.” Scott denounced both...

Obama threatened the GOP this week that “racial tensions may get worse” if he does not get his way with the economy.The White House Dossier reported: President Obama said that if economic prescriptions of the type he supports to increase economic growth and reduce “income inequality” are not adopted, then race relations in the United State may deteriorate further. “If we don’t do anything, then growth will be slower than it should be. Unemployment will not go down as fast as it should. Income inequality will continue to rise,” Obama said in an interview published Sunday by the New York...

In a recent article I called for economic sanctions against Florida to compel business and political leaders in that state to change the “Stand Your Ground Law” that provided the basis for the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. There are times when there is a convergence of ideas, a meeting of minds, such that a particular strategy has the potential to galvanize a movement. This appears to be one of those times. The idea of boycotting Florida is not a Ron Daniels idea or Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW) call. Rather,...

TALLAHASSEE - Florida Gov. Rick Scott sharply criticized Jesse Jackson on Wednesday over comments he made this week while joining a Capitol protest. Jackson spent time with a group upset with the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial. They've refused to leave the Capitol until Scott calls a special session and asks legislators to overhaul the state's "stand your ground" self-defense laws. Scott has refused the request. Jackson, the veteran activist, criticized Florida as the "Selma of our time," referred to it as the "Apartheid State" and made a comparison of Scott to former Alabama Gov. George Wallace. Selma, Ala.,...

President Obama, America’s first half-black, half-white president, went to the White House podium last week to address the nation’s most racially divisive case since Rodney King. But he wasn’t there to calm the country. And he certainly wasn’t there to start some “conversation” on race — he doesn’t find those “particularly productive,” he said, what with all the listening. Instead, he came out unannounced to the briefing room to talk about “how people are feeling.” Not all people, mind you, just black people — and especially, as always, himself. “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago,” said the...

President Barack Obama movingly spoke of the “pain” most African-Americans felt at the acquittal of George Zimmerman. But Obama didn’t speak solely because he felt obliged to make a generic observation about the anger of most blacks toward the verdict, or even out of remembrance of the fight he led in the Illinois state legislature more than a decade ago to get a bill passed that put law enforcement on notice that racial profiling won’t be tolerated. It took many tries and four years to get the bill finally passed. He spoke from a well-documented personal experience. He bluntly noted...

ORLANDO — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. strongly condemned so-called “Stand Your Ground” laws here Tuesday in a speech to the NAACP that addressed the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin. The laws “sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods,” Holder said, by “allowing – and perhaps encouraging – violent situations to escalate in public.”

On Saturday, the left wing blog Politics USA called former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin a racist for criticizing Barack Obama as "lackadaisical." According to the liberal site, "lackadaisical" is a "Jim Crow stereotype," but Webster's online dictionary defines it as "lacking life, spirit, or zest." Jason Easley said that Palin used a question about the way Obama has handled the Edward Snowden affair to attack Obama.

The Senate majority leader said, “It's significant that 150 years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, we are still considering in film, in photo, in art, and activism how to eradicate slavery's unsavory successors.” Reid was speaking at a ceremony unveiling Rosa Parks' statue in the Capitol...