The recent decision to move the criminal trial of Johannes Mehserle – the former BART officer who shot and killed Oscar Grant on New Years Day – to Los Angeles has once again thrust the city to the forefront of controversy involving police abuse and murder.
RACE/SOCIETY
Is it me? Or is this year’s Black History Month programming the thinnest in recent history?
IN HONOR OF 2008, THE EDITORS OF UTC BRING YOU A SELECTION OF THE BEST BLOGS OF THE YEAR.
I don’t even know where to begin. I know. I should have followed my first mind and not watched it. But I did and now with hindsight I wished I watched with no expectations. [...]
So for years I’ve been reading in the newspapers and watching on TV and reading on the internet how race relations are great and it’s not as bad as it used to be. I have strongly disagreed every time I would see such a report knowing that I am a dark-skinned black man living in [...]
To my Same Gender Loving/ lesbian and gay sistahs and brothas: you need to hollah at me.
You don’t have to tell me who you are: I already know. You are my parents, my siblings, my children, my grandbabies.
I know where you live – right next door. I know where you work [...]
As happy as I am that I’ve witnessed the election of a Black president, the struggle is FAR from being over! My primary concern and fear is that the number of people who were finally energized to actually go out and vote, will feel like their job is done and they can become complacent. [...]
“ROSA SAT, SO MARTIN COULD WALK, MARTIN WALKED SO OBAMA COULD RUN, OBAMA [WON] SO OUR CHILDREN COULD FLY!”—Daily Kos
I don’t know who originated this quote but it has made the rounds both before and after the election. What does it really mean and is there any truth to it?
The quote argues [...]
Sometimes when you are in the midst of watching an historic event unfold, you don’t know what or how to feel. Such was the case for me as I watched the culmination of what was nothing short of miraculous: an African-American male became the 44th President of the United States.
As the build [...]
“All the white people she has ever met needed, in one way or another, to be reassured, consoled, to have their consciences priced but not blasted; could not, could not afford to hear a truth which would shatter, irrevocably, their image of themselves. It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a [...]
The election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States represents a major, attitudinal shift in America with regard to race. Bigotry and racism are still alive in our nation (on both the individual and institutional levels), but Obama’s victory proves that most Americans want to move past the divisive and oppressive [...]