Free Republic

Among the 10 people who will decide whether to pay members of Boston's black community are two high schoolers and one college student. High school juniors Damani Williams and Denilson Fanfan, as well as 22-year-old University of Massachusetts student and Black Lives Matter organizer Carrie Mays, were named to the city's reparations task force on Tuesday.... The proposal has already sparked debate about whether monetary reparations should be paid exclusively to black Americans descended from slaves, WGHB reports, or whether it should include black immigrants who may have still suffered impacts of so-called systemic racism..... ...In announcing the members of...

The Anti-Asian Hate Crime legislation may make senators feel good about themselves, but it won't do much to address the real concerns of Asian Americans.In response to the rise of anti-Asian crimes, the U.S. Senate passed an Anti-Asian Hate Crime bill by a 94 to 1 vote. Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, the bill’s lead sponsor, said passing the legislation sent a “solid message of solidarity that the Senate will not be a bystander as anti-Asian violence surges in our country.” Yet a close examination of the bill raises the uncomfortable question of whether the effort will do anything meaningful to...

In 1857, the Supreme Court, with 7 of the 9 Justices being Democrat, decided that Dred Scott was not a citizen, but property. Chief Justice Roger Taney was appointed by the first Democrat President, Andrew Jackson. Taney wrote in his Dred Scott decision that slaves were "so far inferior ... that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for their own benefit." Abraham Lincoln rejected this. He did not believe in "stare decisis" - that he had to honor the precedent of the Dred Scott decision, stating June 28, 1857: "We think the Dred Scott decision is...

With Milwaukee set to host the 2020 Democratic convention, the Democratic National Committee is counting in part on the region’s fast-growing Asian American and Pacific Islander population to help them win back the Midwest. “In certain states, the Asian-American vote is enough to help make that margin of victory,” Rep. Grace Meng, of New York, a DNC vice chair, said in a phone interview last week.

SNIP----the dismissal of sworn confessions of Smollett’s co-conspirators and reams of physical evidence, is the latest example of identity politics . Chicago feminist prosecutor Kim Foxx is among local progressive prosecutors who came to power playing race politics. Foxx campaigned on the Critical Race Theory credo that the criminal justice system is endemically biased. She inveighed against the so-called school-to-prison pipeline and promised to reduce racial disparities in prosecutions......she dismissed aggravated battery charges against a 16-year-old who attacked two Chicago police officers....a pattern of favoring offenders over police officers. Foxx operates in an insular cultural milieu that believes prosecuting Smollett...

Just because a person from a racial minority gets into a nasty argument over the provision of a service does not mean he has been discriminated against, the Ontario Divisional Court has ruled, in the case of a librarian who asked two black lawyers for identification in a courthouse library. The ruling on alleged racial profiling, rare because it does not involve police, clarifies that discrimination must be proven, not just assumed because the complainant is part of a minority. “A complainant cannot merely point to his or her membership in a racialized group and an unpleasant interaction to establish...

Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) members on Wednesday criticized the Obama administration for not doing enough to help African-Americans through the bleak economy. Soon after withholding their votes on a wide-ranging financial services bill, 10 CBC members said they are pressuring the White House to do more. The House Financial Services Committee voted 31-27 in favor of the bill, but the lawmakers’ boycott came on a major financial measure the administration wants to see Congress pass this month. “We have not been forceful enough in our efforts to protect the most vulnerable of our population,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who...

A federal immigration judge denied bail Friday to a 23-year-old engineering student from Tampa who has been charged by the U.S. government for engaging in terrorism. The defendant, Youssef Megahed, has already been acquitted by a federal jury of related charges. But now, he faces essentially the same charges again in an immigration court, where if he is found guilty he faces deportation back to his native Egypt. The case has inflamed Muslim immigrant groups, and has become a cause célèbre in Egypt, where President Barack Obama makes a much anticipated trip next week. The issue: Whether an immigrant defendant...

<p>Eastwood has no time for Lee's gripes. "He was complaining when I did Bird [the 1988 biopic of Charlie Parker]. Why would a white guy be doing that? I was the only guy who made it, that's why. He could have gone ahead and made it. Instead he was making something else." As for Flags of Our Fathers, he says, yes, there was a small detachment of black troops on Iwo Jima as a part of a munitions company, "but they didn't raise the flag. The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn't do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people'd go, 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate." Lee shouldn't be demanding African-Americans in Eastwood's next picture, either. Changeling is set in Los Angeles during the Depression, before the city's make-up was changed by the large black influx. "What are you going to do, you gonna tell a fuckin' story about that?" he growls. "Make it look like a commercial for an equal opportunity player? I'm not in that game. I'm playing it the way I read it historically, and that's the way it is. When I do a picture and it's 90% black, like Bird, I use 90% black people."</p>

If Bill Clinton was the "first black president," his wife and Barack Obama are vying to be the second. Obama, the only black running for the White House, came into a debate Thursday night at predominantly black Howard University with the crowd on his side, chanting his name as all eight Democratic candidates posed for pictures on stage. But Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared to win many of them over in an impassioned performance that addressed their anger over inequality. "If HIV/AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be...

If Barack Obama makes it all the way to becoming the Democratic nominee for President in 2008, a feat he says he may attempt, a much more complex understanding of the difference between color and ethnic identity will be upon us for the very first time. Back in 2004, Alan Keyes made this point quite often. Keyes was the black Republican carpetbagger chosen by the elephants to run against Obama for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. The choice of Keyes was either a Republican version of affirmative action or an example of just how dumb the party believes black...

A talk with federal officials tentatively set for late August The League of United Latin American Citizens and others have requested to meet with U.S. Department of Education officials about the denial of $3.4 million in federal grants for educational assistance programs that would affect 12 area schools. Feliberto Valdez, director of the Corpus Christi LULAC National Education Service Center, said he will continue to seek alternative local sources of funds but plans to shut down the center's operations Aug. 31. "We're trying to get members of the community to send letters to the Department of Education," he said. "We're...

Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus are teaming up with conservative Republicans to push for the first major changes in the 2002 campaign-finance reform bill, most admitting that they made a mistake in voting for the bill three years ago. "If I had the chance to vote again, I wouldn't vote the way I voted," said Rep. Gregory W. Meeks, New York Democrat, who along with most of the CBC supported the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act after they were promised by Democratic leaders that the bill would not harm their constituents or funding bases in order to garner their...

Silent No More: A Major Crisis in the African-American CommunityBy Rev. John J. Raphael, SSJRoman Catholic ChaplainHoward University, Washington, DC Do you know what the leading cause of death in the African American Community since 1973 is? Think about it for a minute. Is it heart disease-2,266,789 deaths since 1973, cancer-1,638,350, or accidents-370,723? Is it AIDS-203,695, or violent crimes-306, 313? There is one possibility that is often overlooked. It happens 1452 times a day in our community. It has taken over 13 million Black lives within the last 30 years. It has taken 1/3 of our present population. What...

NEW YORK A syndicated newspaper column by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, which slammed Ohio's handling of the recent presidential election, is being accused of "blatant inaccuracies" by the Ohio Secretary of State's office. Carlo Lo Paro, press secretary for Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, claims that Jackson's column, distributed earlier this week through Tribune Media Services, contains numerous inaccuracies that hint at improper behavior by Blackwell's office. "We expect someone writing an op-ed and a syndicate distributing that op-ed would fact-check information and have a responsibility to the facts," Lo Paro told E&P Wednesday. "We believe someone can have...

<p>WASHINGTON — Democrat Howard Dean has drawn new faces to politics, many of them young, middle-class Web surfers. Few of those faces are of color.</p> <p>The presidential candidate has seized the momentum in the nine-way primary race with an Internet-driven campaign that has attracted thousands of supporters and millions of dollars. But Dean's success with minorities, a crucial constituency for any Democratic candidate, has been limited and political analysts wonder whether he can broaden his appeal.</p>