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Over the weekend we 
Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was a traitor, a racist, and some say, a murderer--basically the trifecta of despicability.
In the early 1960s America was shocked by images of Birmingham, Alabama's notorious and bigoted Police Commissioner 
It seems that Iowa's newly elected Republican Governor, 
The epicenter of crime in the black community, at least according to the
If you're black or Latino and you're planning on traveling in New York City, I suggest you fill your pockets with lots of subway and bus tokens because you're going to find hailing a cab next to impossible.
The owners of a Connecticut roller skating rink aren't apologizing for equating the traditional headscarf worn by many Muslim women to a Do-rag.
Why all the furor and consternation about the government sanctioned group grope playing out in our nation's airports this Thanksgiving season?
If I lived in New York, I know who would get my vote for governor. That's right, I'd put a big fat check mark next to the name of 
As is usually the case when it comes to talking about racism, folks have the tendency to quickly change the subject, and I find that infuriating.
The truth that you can't ignore when you bike across America, as Father Matthew Ruhl has just done, is this: poverty impacts every community.
Why are we still throwing black kids out of school like there’s no tomorrow?
Way down south in the land of cotton it's clear that "old times there ain't forgotten," particularly if you're State Sen. Glenn McConnell, leader of the South Carolina GOP.
I still haven't quite figured out what to make of Glenn Beck's "
Putting a new and sobering twist on baby mama drama, a recently-released study indicates that more than half of poor babies have mothers who are suffering from depression.
Don’t let those chubby cheeks or that toothless angelic grin fool you. While you're naively cooing goo goo ga ga, that cuddly, cherubic infant before you could be plotting America’s demise.
The makeshift shelter — a hurriedly constructed A-frame of 2x4s covered by a heavy plastic tarp — is a far cry from the glistening glass and brick 
Carl Chancellor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has been writing about social justice issues for decades, is a columnist for Change.org.
Okay, I guess I’m a slow learner, but I finally get it: the GOP ain’t feeling black folk — nor brown, gay, or unemployed people for that matter.
- by Carl Chancellor · June 28, 2010 · HUMAN RIGHTSRead More »
In a state known for its "eccentric" brand of politicians — from Strom Thurmond to Gov. Mark "Where’s Waldo" Sanford and Rep. Joe "You Lie" Wilson — Alvin Greene would fit right in.
But if he's going to add his name to the Palmetto State’s roster of illustrious elected officials, Mr. Greene — the unlikely Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate — first has to beat the Republican incumbent Sen. Jim DeMint.
Conventional wisdom would tell you that Greene, a bizarre, unknown candidate with limited financial resources and an abundance of personal problems (including a pending felony charge) has no chance of defeating Senator DeMint. But then again, with a little luck, who really knows? Certainly, stranger things have happened.
As a matter of fact, a few strange (and suspicious) things have already taken place. For example, Greene — who is unemployed — was somehow able to come up with the $10,500 filing fee to run in the Democratic primary. And if that weren't enough, Greene won his primary election against a well-known and deep-pocketed opponent (garnering 60% of the vote) without even campaigning. I mean the man didn't have to make one stump speech, do one interview, or kiss even one baby. What's going on here?
Some (mostly South Carolina Democratic Party leaders) claim that some shady deals were cut to push Greene's weak candidacy, and perhaps even political shenanigans involved. It's even been suggested that Greene is actually a Republican plant. I don't know about that, but what's clear to me is that anything is politically possible in South Carolina.
- by Carl Chancellor · June 22, 2010 · ECONOMIC JUSTICERead More »
The prospect of massive classroom overcrowding, limited text books and deep program cuts — basically being short-changed on their educations — poor New Jersey public school children have asked the state Supreme Court to block more than a billion dollar in school cuts proposed by Gov. Chris Christie.
The 300,000 poor students, represented by the Education Law Center, filed a motion earlier this month asking the Court to enforce New Jersey's funding formula, the School Funding Reform Act of 2008 (pdf). The funding formula set baseline per-pupil spending levels needed to ensure "the thorough and efficient" public education guaranteed to all students by the state's constitution. In addition, the SFRA required additional funding along with all-day prekindergarten for New Jersey's low-income students.
Gov. Christie's $1.8 billion cuts in state aid to schools, a reduction of 13.6 percent, will drop the funding levels for the 2010-2011 school year below what is required by the SFRA. In filing its motion, the ELC, which advocates for access to an equal and adequate education for all public school children, noted that the aid cut has already forced school districts statewide to layoff-teachers and support staff and eliminate vital programs and services, including tutoring, programs for at-risk students and health services.
Further, according to the ELC — the substantial cuts are occurring at the same time that the performance of New Jersey students ranks among the nation's best, and the Garden State has gained national prominence for gains among low-income and minority students.
Maybe someone should place a dunce cap atop of Gov. Christie's curly head and sit him off in a corner until he learns that you don't pull the plug on success.
Photo credit: San Jose Library
- by Carl Chancellor · June 16, 2010 · HUMAN RIGHTSRead More »
"Is this real?" asked a little boy who couldn’t comprehend what he had just seen and heard. It seems the boy couldn’t accept the notion that four young men — well-dressed college students — would be denied service at a restaurant, simply because their skin was black.
It was exactly the kind of honest, straight-forward question that a 6-year-old would ask.
"The little boy thought it was a story I had made up. He just refused to believe that such a thing could happen," said Xavier Carnegie, who for the last 18 months has been reenacting the Greensboro lunch counter sit-in of 1960 at the Smithsonian National American History Museum.
But to answer the 6-year-old's question: It wasn’t that long ago that blacks in this country were subject to Jim Crow laws, which sanctioned legal discrimination and segregation. Laws that made it perfectly legal for a waitress at a Woolworth’s lunch counter to flat-out refuse to serve four black men. And yes, it was very real.
- by Carl Chancellor · June 01, 2010 · HUMAN RIGHTSRead More »
I think I’m finally regaining my bearings after a disorienting and seriously disturbing month of May, during which I wondered if I had somehow become trapped in an H.G. Wells-like time experiment. It was as if I had some how become stuck in an episode of Quantum Leap; did a reverse Rip Van Winkle; or for my baby-boomer readers — took a spin in Mr. Peabody’s WABAC (wayback) machine.
It all started when Rand Paul, the GOP nominee to be the next U.S. Senator from Kentucky, suggested that he would consider repealing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, based on his belief that government should not force private businesses to abide by civil rights law.
Although he's since repeatedly claimed otherwise, Paul obviously longs for the return of segregated lunch counters, white and colored entrance signs, back-of-the-bus seating arrangements, restrictive covenants — your basic Jim Crow redux.
Just as I was grappling with the craziness of Paul and the real meaning behind his GOP primary victory speech — "We have come to take our government back" — I was rocked again.
This time I was mindlessly sipping a cup of hot tea and channel surfing, trying to calm my nerves after a particularly restless night, when I thought I heard a news story about a bunch of high school kids in Georgia who were parading through the hallways of their 90% white school dressed in Ku Klux Klan garb. I was so shocked by what I was hearing that I lost hold of my tea mug. I'm sure I must have scalded myself, but if I did, I didn't notice since at that point I was lost in a frantic attempt to reassure myself that I was still living in 2010.
- by Carl Chancellor · June 01, 2010 · ECONOMIC JUSTICE
I have an assignment for any New York City councilmember still wavering on supporting a new bill mandating a "living wage" be paid to employees working on city-subsidized projects: read the book Both Hands Tied: Welfare Reform and the Race to the Bottom of the Low-Wage Labor Market by co-authors Jane L. Collins and Victoria Mayer.
The book, which examines the lives of 33 Milwaukee and Racine, Wisconsin women and their families trying to survive on minimum wage jobs, shares the harsh realities of employment in the low-wage labor market. While the book focuses on the impact of welfare reform (or, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which made cash assistance both temporary and contingent on work outside the home) it nonetheless underscores a basic truth: when workers do not earn enough to make ends meet, taxpayers pick up the tab.
Collins, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told me recently that the only group that benefits from low-wage jobs is corporations. Certainly the women she followed in her book for more than a year in 2004 were no better off once they began working. Despite working 40 hours a week, none of them were able to successfully break the cycle of poverty.
"There are tens of thousands (in Wisconsin) working 40 hours a week but are unable to afford secure housing, child care or medical insurance," Collins said. She said many of the women she followed for her book just couldn't "hold on to housing" when faced with meeting the cost of caring for children and paying rent. "Many families went through several episodes of eviction and homelessness."
Nationally, as a result of welfare reform millions of poor single mothers found work, almost always in low-wage, no-benefit jobs that still left them below the poverty line, in some cases taking home less than $9,500 a year. Almost without fail these women had to turn the state for additional aid.
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by Carl Chancellor · May 17, 2010 · ECONOMIC JUSTICERead More »When you are poor it seems you can never catch a break.
Just when it appears that progress is finally being made in curbing the most outrageous practices of payday lenders an even bigger shark is circling in the water — nationally-chartered banks.
Big national banks like Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank and Fifth Third Bank have begun offering their own versions of the small-amount, short-term payday-type loans carrying the same astronomical interest rates and fees that keep borrowers (typically poor and minority) trapped in a cycle of debt.
It's up to federal lawmakers to carefully regulate this growing trend. It is imperative that the new Wall Street reform set guidelines to protect consumers, including establishing a Consumer Financial Protection Agency that will operate independently of the banks and lenders it governs.
Fifteen states plus the District of Columbia have passed laws that cap the annual interest rate of payday lenders, which in many states amounts to upwards of 400 percent annually. However, these states have little control over how nationally chartered banks do business within their borders. The national banks, seeing the profits to be made from payday-type loans, can't wait to sink their teeth into the millions of mainly poor borrowers who rely on small, short-term loans of $500 or less to make ends meet.
by Carl Chancellor · May 16, 2010 · HUMAN RIGHTSRead More »South Carolina is the latest among a growing number of states pushing to make voting a privilege, rather than a right.
In May, lawmakers in the South Carolina House passed legislation requiring its citizens to show a government-issued photo identification card in order to vote at the polls.
The Republican-backed measure creates an unnecessary and unreasonable barrier for voters, particularly minority, poor and elderly voters who are less likely to possess photo ID.
If the South Carolina Senate approves the measure, which is all but a foregone conclusion, folks showing up at the polls in the Palmetto State will have to quickly produce a valid driver’s license, current passport, or state-issued photo ID card to show poll workers in order to cast a ballot.
South Carolina lawmakers passed the bill, even though a recent report by the state’s Elections Commission indicated that upwards of 180,000 of South Carolina’s registered voters don’t have a driver’s license or a state-issued photo ID. That means somewhere in the neighborhood of 8% of the state’s registered voters — many of them black and poor — will be disenfranchised.
I wonder if the law isn’t a cynical move by certain lawmakers (what the heck, I might as well call it like it is — Republican lawmakers) to suppress the vote of blacks and minorities?
by Carl Chancellor · May 12, 2010 · HUMAN RIGHTSRead More »Thank you Arizona, for underscoring the fact that there is no black-versus-brown divide when it comes to immigration reform. We aren't falling for that tired old divide-and-conquer ploy of pitting African-Americans against their Latino brothers and sisters.
Case in point: The brothers of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc., America's oldest historically black Greek-lettered organization, has decided to move their national convention from Phoenix, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada. All to protest the recent passage of Arizona's anti-immigrant bill — SB1070.
Herman "Skip" Mason, Jr., the fraternity's national general president, said the Alpha board of directors voted unanimously to move its 104th Anniversary/90th General Convention in July from Phoenix to denounce the "egregious immigration act" signed by the Arizona governor.
"It was the full opinion of the board that we could not host a meeting in a state that has sanctioned a law which we believe will lead to racial profiling and discrimination, and a law that could put the civil rights and very dignity of our members at risk during their stay in Phoenix, Arizona," said Mason.
A host of civil rights leaders have applauded Alpha Phi Alpha's move, including Rev. Al Sharpton and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who are pushing for a tourism boycott of Arizona.
With Alpha Phi Alpha pulling its convention, which was expected to draw an estimated 10,000 participants, Phoenix-area businesses will see losses in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. But it's not just Phoenix that will take a financial hit, Alpha Phi Alpha is facing more than $300,000 in penalties the result of breaking contracts with Phoenix hotels and caterers.
Still, Mason said the fraternity had to take a moral stand.
by Carl Chancellor · May 03, 2010 · HUMAN RIGHTSRead More »I pledged allegiance to the flag the other day — something that until fairly recently, I had not realized I had stopped doing.
I can’t tell you exactly when I stopped saying the Pledge, and more to the point, stopped believing in the words. However, I do know that by the time John Carlos and Tommie Smith took their iconic stance on the Olympic medal podium in Mexico City in 1968, I had already gone mute whenever that other ubiquitous show of public patriotism, the National Anthem, was played.
Of course, those were the passions of 15-year-old youngster who had felt the sting of Jim Crow in the South, had tasted the bitterness of de facto segregation in the North, and was angry. And as I grew older and began to witness real progress in race relations in my country and in my personal interactions, this attitude mellowed.
For the last 35 years or more I never gave much thought to standing respectfully for the recitation of the Pledge before the opening of a government meeting, or getting to my feet and removing my hat when the National Anthem was played before the start of a ball game. My actions were automatic, done on an almost subconscious level. But my lips stayed motionless.
So it came as a complete surprise when a little more than 18 months ago, during a city council meeting, I became aware of the fact that I was standing with my right hand laid over my heart and the words — "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America..." — coming from my mouth.
What’s more, for the first time since I was in elementary school, I believed the words I was reciting: "with liberty and justice for all."
by Carl Chancellor · April 28, 2010 · ECONOMIC JUSTICERead More »The odds of escaping generational poverty just got a lot steeper for millions of poor children attending our nation's public schools.
The New York Times recently reported that school districts across the country, faced with deep funding cuts, are being forced to consider drastic cost-cutting measures, including laying-off teachers and increasing class sizes. These cuts are sure to have onerous consequences for carrying out the mission of education, particularly for schools in poor urban and rural districts already struggling to teach children.
Unfortunately, school districts from New Jersey to California have no alternatives, thanks to a recession that has decimated their usual sources of revenue — state money and local property taxes. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called the situation a potential "education catastrophe."
According to the Times, the 2010-2011 school term is "shaping up as one of the most austere in the last half century." Districts, sparing no portion of their budgets from the chopping block, are looking to layoff teachers, close schools, eliminate programs, enlarge classes, reduce the purchases of supplies and equipment, including textbooks, and shorten the school day, week or year, all in the name of saving a buck.
In the past, school districts have looked to tighten budgets by making cuts to areas not considered to directly impact student achievement. However, with districts facing staggering monetary shortfalls — lowering thermostats, turning off lights, doing away with extracurricular programs, limiting bus transportation — just won't do the trick. This round of cuts for many districts is down to the bone.
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