theblackbottom

Once You Learn How to Read, You Will Be Forever Free!~Frederick Douglass
REVIEW
REVIEW
Alex Heard is an editor at Wired magazine. He has also edited and written for The New York Times Magazine, Outside, The New Republic, Slate, and many other publications.
Nadifa Mohamed was born in Hargesia, Somalia in 1981 and was educated in the [...]

You know you’re watching a groundbreaking documentary when it not only forces you out of your comfort zone but also manages to persuade you to reassess your point-of-view without resorting to potentially-alienating polemic.
This is the case with Biracial, Not Black, Damn It!, a poignant, thought-provoking and ultimately most-enlightening film directed by the brilliant Carolyn Battle [...]

Michelle Chen
(Photo by Getty Images)

It appears that despite Washington’s attempts to close the racial “achievement gap,” the educational colorline still looms over Black youth.
According to a study by the Schott Foundation for Public Education, fewer than half of Black male students graduated from high school on time in the 2007-2008 [...]

If you learn how to read, you will be forever free!~Frederick Douglass
REVIEW
REVIEW
Attica Locke is a writer whose first novel, Black Water Rising, was nominated for a 2010 Edgar Award, a 2010 NAACP Image Award, as well as a Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was longlisted for an Orange Prize in the UK. Attica [...]

Once you learn how to read, you will be forever free~Frederick Douglass
REVIEW
REVIEW

Elon James White is a Brooklyn-based comedian, writer and host of the award-winning web series This Week in Blackness, a satirical look at race, politics and pop-culture in a so-called “post-racial” America. White has been a featured commentator on VH1’s “Black to the Future” & “The Great Debate.”His commentary on race and politics has [...]

· An estimated 3.9 million Americans, or one in fifty adults, have currently or permanently lost the ability to vote because of a felony conviction.
· 1.4 million persons disenfranchised for a felony conviction are ex-offenders who have completed their criminal sentence. Another 1.4 million of the disenfranchised are on [...]

If you learn how to read, you will be forever free~Frederick Douglass
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
Carole C. Marks is a professor of sociology at the University of Delaware and the coauthor of The Power of Pride: Stylemakers and Rulebreakers of the Harlem Renaissance.
Robert Stepto’s fields of interest include early African American narratives (Equiano to Douglass and Jacobs), American Renaissance [...]

Congress Approves Crack Cocaine Sentencing Changes
Tribune Washington Bureau
3:19 PM PDT, July 28, 2010
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Washington…Addressing what both Democrats and Republicans agreed was a quarter-century old injustice in drug sentencing, Congress gave final approval Wednesday to a bill reducing the penalty for crack cocaine offenders.
The legislation, which was welcomed by the Obama administration, reduces the disparities between sentences [...]

Below you will find a piece decrying Affirmative Action by U. S. Senator James Webb of Virginia posted in the Wall Street Journal this week. There are many valid different opinions about the role of affirmative action, however, this is not one. What I find ironic about Mr. Webb’s take is that he is the [...]