theblackbottom

Colbert King spells out the perils of Bourgeois Politics plainly. There is an old saying, “Dance with the one that brought you.” I am curious as to Mr. Fenty’s understanding of the history of Black people in D.C. and why they might feel resentful to the emerging politics of race and economic privilege in the [...]

Thursday
July 15
Source: In These Times
By Michelle Chen
Workers protest at Woodfin Suites Hotel, in Emeryville, Calif.   (Photo by David Bacon)

Across the industrialized world, governments have dreamed up various schemes for reinvigorating deflated economies, from blood-sucking austerity budgets to paying for scrap metal. Nowhere is the desperation more evident than [...]

The loss of civil rights advocate William L. Taylor
Friday, July 2, 2010; A22
Source: Washington Post

BILL TAYLOR was not one of those bold-face Washington names — except to those in the civil rights movement. If you were in that movement, you probably knew William L. Taylor, who died Monday at the age of [...]

Ishmael Reed is a poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, and musician. He has received recognition in every category. His latest projects are a book of essays, Mixing It Up, Taking On The Media Bullies, and an anthology that includes some Bay Area authors, Pow Wow, Charting the Fault Lines in the American Experience-Short Fiction from Then [...]

Joel I. Klein is chancellor of New York City schools. Michael L. Lomax is president and chief executive of the United Negro College Fund. Janet Murguía is president and chief executive of the National Council of La Raza. They are co-chairs of the Board of the Education Equality Project.
In the [...]

Tyler Branson is an American Studies Master’s student at the University of Kansas, originally from Norman, Oklahoma. His current interests include the confluence of race, technology, rhetoric, and politics.

Arizona governor Jan Brewer recently signed a bill into law that further facilitates what the Economist has rightly called “hysterical nativism,” or rather, a law that, [...]

Ms. Candace E. Chivis resides in Grand Rapids, Michigan and is running for Kent County Commissioner. Ms. Chivis is a graduate of Grand Rapids Central High School, Grand Rapids Community College, and the University of Michigan. If you wish to contact Ms. Chivis, she can be reached Committee to Elect Candace E. Chivis, 2140 Madison [...]

Courtney Young is currently completing two books, the first of which is entitled Color Me Color Struck: How Colorism Marginalizes Women of Color in Popular Culture of which she serves as the editor. The second book is a collection of essays entitled From Michelle to Madea: Images of Black Women in [...]

Colbert I. King is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Washington Post. He is deputy editor of the Post’s editorial page. This is King’s take in the column Post Partisan
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele apparently will do anything to stay on the payroll, even if it means sacrificing his identity as a black man [...]

Linda Greenhouse, the winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize, writes on alternate Fridays about the Supreme Court and the law. She reported on the Supreme Court for The New York Times from 1978 to 2008. She teaches at Yale Law School and is the author of a biography of Justice Harry A. Blackmun, “Becoming Justice [...]