Is it 2012? Yes, it is, but in Sanford, Florida (near Orlando), the clock winds back to the days of Deep South Justice. Unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was hunted down and gunned down for the heinous crime of “carrying Skittles while black.” Charles Blow, in the NYT: Trayvon had left the house he and his [...]

As we learned back in 2008, the race-baiting fringe was so overwhelmed by the possibility of having a black man as President that they became completely unglued, showing up at McCain/Palin rallies to hang their bigoted @sshattery out for the whole world to see, gleefully shaking monkey dolls with “Obama” on them, burning crosses and [...]

When Viola Davis lost the Oscar for best actress portraying an African American maid in Katherine Stockett’s The Help to Meryl Streep portraying former Britain Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady at the 84th Academy Awards ceremony, there was a collective sigh of relief from many of us African American sisters. Tulane University [...]

This doesn’t surprise me a bit. The uncomfortable truth that some of our founding fathers owned human beings to work their fields, clean and cook in their homes, and serve as forced concubines has upset the Tennessee Tea Party. It’s just too embarrassing to laud those great white men who split families apart and had non-compliant [...]

This open letter by Joi Ruth Orr, Director of Organizing, Faith Leaders for Community Change, needs to be spread far and wide. It first appeared on Huffington Post. Mr. Gingrich, For this you still owe our children an apology: “Some of the things they could do is work in a library, work in the front office, some [...]

“I know deep down in my sanctified soul that he did not take a bullet for same-sex unions.” – Bernice King, the daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King in December 2004.  She marched with the now-disgraced, scandal-ridden Bishop Eddie Long that year in a march against marriage equality. In 2012, at Atlanta’s annual Martin Luther King [...]

Today is MLK Day. I am proud to count myself among the many people working for social justice today who stand on the shoulders of Martin Luther King, Jr. Too many people think King’s statements regarding justice are only about race and the African-American community – thus excluding the LGBTQ community. But King said that, [...]

Seldom do I see my image anywhere, especially portrayed in non-stereotypical and non-heterosexist ways on the silver screen. As a matter of fact, if you Google “black lesbians” or “black lesbians in film” you’ll get a plethora of porn sites to visit. But writer-director Dee Rees’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama “Pariah” gives me a glimpse of [...]

And a Q of the day: waitstaff out there — how many of you have received a bible or bible tract as a tip, and what was your worst customer experience? It wasn’t that long ago (1994) that the restaurant chain Denny’s got into hot water for refusing to seat and serve black customers. Around [...]

Gays on television today is nothing new. And we can thank Ellen DeGeneres’s watershed moment in April 1997 when she came out on her sitcom “Ellen.” Today’s openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) television personalities are Neil Patrick Harris, Jane Lynch, Rachel Maddow, and Rosie O’Donnell, to name just a few. And these [...]