While many Republican candidates for president have danced around the reason for the horrific shootings at Emanuel AME, Ben Carson to his credit called racism when he saw it in a statement he released on June 18th. Read his statement below.
Last night evil walked the streets of Charleston. My heart aches for the families of the victims. I pray for the...
Posted by Dr. Ben Carson on Thursday, June 18, 2015
I really don't give a damn about the piece of human trash that killed nine people at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston SC. The focus should be on the nine innocent victims of the senseless shooting who were killed for no other reason than they were black. Read their names below. George L. Cook III AfricanAmericanReports.com
State Sen. Clementa Pinckney, the church’s pastor.
Cynthia Hurd, 54, St. Andrews regional branch manager for the Charleston County Public Library system.
Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, a church pastor, speech therapist and coach of the girls’ track and field team at Goose Creek High School.
Tywanza Sanders, 26, who had a degree in business administration from Allen University.
Ethel Lance, 70, a retired Gilliard Center employee who worked recently as a church janitor.
Susie Jackson, 87, Lance’s cousin who was named by a relative and was a longtime church member.
Depayne Middleton Doctor, 49, who retired in 2005 as Charleston County director of the Community Development Block Grant Program.
Mira Thompson, 59, a pastor at the church.
Daniel Simmons Sr., 74, who died in a hospital operating room.
While the world is worried about Rachel Dolezal or how much money Jurassic World is making, a plot to deport darker skinned people of Haitian descent from the Dominican Republic has been unfolding. Those in danger of being deported include those born in the Dominican Republic but stripped of their citizenship by a 2013 ruling from the Dominican Republic Constitutional Court ruled.
Hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent faced the risk of deportation from the Dominican Republic on Wednesday as a deadline for enforcement of a new immigration law approached.
Dominican officials say anyone lacking identity documents or who has not registered for a so-called "regularization" program before the Wednesday night deadline could face deportation.
The Dominican government says the changes to its nationality and immigration laws aim to tackle illegal migration from neighboring Haiti. Human rights groups say the move is rooted in longstanding racism and xenophobia in the Dominican Republic towards darker-skinned Haitians.
Read more: Haitians In Dominican Republic Fear Deportation As Deadline Looms
San Antonio, the seventh-largest U.S. city and the only one of the 10 largest cities with a Hispanic majority, elected its first African-American mayor on Saturday in a closely watched runoff election.
Ivy Taylor, a Yale-educated urban planning professor, won with an unlikely coalition of the city’s two largest minority voting groups, blacks and generally conservative white voters, the latter comprising just 26 percent of the 1.4 million population.
Taylor was appointed interim mayor last summer, when Julian Castro resigned to become Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, winning the seat outright in Saturday's runoff with 52 percent against one of the state’s best-known politicians.
Read more: Hispanic majority San Antonio elects African-American mayor
Looks like Lando Calrissian won't be the only black man in the Star Wars universe. Variety reports that Forest Whitaker is in negotiations to join the first Star Wars anthology picture, Rogue One. Chances are that since he has won an Oscar his character probably wont die first and should be in the movie for more than thirty minutes.
Today June 15, 2015, Rachel Dolezal stepped down from her post as president of the Spokane Chapter of the NAACP. Read Rachel Dolezal's resignation letter to the NAACP below.
Dear Executive Committee and NAACP Members, It is a true honor to serve in the racial and social justice movement here...
Posted by Spokane NAACP on Monday, June 15, 2015
Civil rights activist Fred Davis has posted a billboard in Tennessee which reads “Black lives matter. So let's quit killing each other.” Check out this report focusing on Fred Davis and the billboard below.
Billy Ray Fields, an African American police officer in Georgia has posted a video doing something that can quickly ease tensions between African American communities and cops. Fields admits that there are bad cops and hopes that they are kicked off the force. What's sad is that he also admits that speaking out could hurt his career although he also speaks up for good cops. Check out the video below.
I love Melissa Harris-Perry so I'm just going to present this without comment.
In light of the rash of videos showing police acting inappropriately toward African Americans there are two things we can expect whenever a video comes out. One being that everyone will see the videos and based on their own biases see what they want to see. The second thing is that conservatives/republicans/Tea Party will always side with the police and give them the overwhelming benefit of the doubt. Many African Americans will side with the victim because many have had or know family members that experienced their rights violated by the police. It's sad, but things always break down by race and political beliefs with this cases.
Conservatives will always find a way to side with the cop no matter what they see on video. They will post pictures of the victim holding up their middle finger or acting in a thuggish manner (even if it's not an actual picture of the victim), claim the kids were disrespectful, or if they are lucky find and post a victim's criminal record. They will do this to justify whatever the officer did as if past mistakes or teenage stupidity allows one to be beaten or shot. It's automatically assumed that the black victims were somehow at fault. They expect minorities to blindly show respect to people who in many cases show no respect to them.
There are two things that amaze me about conservatives/ Tea Party types always siding with the police.
One being that no matter how many of these videos come out, theses are always considered isolated incidents. Conservatives tend to believe that there are no bad cops just bad blacks that get themselves shot or beaten.
It's also amazing to me that people who are always spouting off about the government trying to violate their constitutional rights have no problem with police violating the rights of African Americans or other minorities. If you believe it's okay for police departments to police many minority communities the way that they do, then you believe in allowing them to routinely violate those people's civil rights. Conservatives should be the first to stand up and denounce inappropriate police actions if they truly believe the BS they spout.
Now of course that's not going to happen and one has to wonder why. Is it just having the utmost respect for law enforcement? Is it simply a blind eye to the realities of policing in minority neighborhoods, or is it due to the hue of the victim's skin as in good old fashioned racism or bias?
George L. Cook III, AfricanAmericanReports.com
Cleveland activists made an unusual legal maneuver Tuesday aimed at forcing the arrest of two officers involved in the shooting death of 12-year-old boy Tamir Rice last year.
Saying they were losing confidence in the grand jury process, the activists instead asked a judge to order the arrests of the officers.
The move, known as an "affidavit of person having knowledge of offense," centers on a widely distributed security camera footage of the Nov. 22 shooting, that shows two officers, Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, responding to a recreation center playground where Rice was playing with a pellet gun. Within two seconds of stopping, Loehmann, a rookie officer, shot him. Tamir died the next day.
Read more: Tamir Rice Shooting Death: Activists Try Rare Move to Force Arrest of Cops
The bikini-clad teenage girl, Dajerria Becton who was forcibly restrained by a police officer responding to a disturbance at a pool party in a Dallas suburb over the weekend says she was an invited guest and was obeying his orders to leave when he grabbed her. She has now spoken out to a local Texas TV station. Watch that interview below.
The teen boy who recorded the now-infamous McKinney pool party take down by Cpl. Eric Casebolt video spoke to a local television station Monday. Watch that interview below.
[SOURCE] Basketball legend, Charles Barkley recently announced his intention to make a $1,000,000 gift to Morehouse College. In that same announcement he pledged similar support to Auburn University (his Alma Mater) and the Wounded Warrior project.
The gift to Morehouse will benefit the College’s burgeoning Journalism and Sports Program (JSP) that was initiated in 2007. Since its inception, this program has sent 31 of its students into the media workforce, while an additional 15 have earned master’s degrees in journalism or related fields, including six at Columbia University.
Currently, nearly 65% of professional football players and 80% of professional basketball players are black; yet only 6% of newspaper sports journalists are African American. In response to this phenomenon, JSP was conceived by veteran filmmaker and Morehouse alumnus Spike Lee and his friend, the late Ralph Wiley, one of the nation’s first African American sports columnists.
JSP’s Director, Ron Thomas, joyfully reacted to this surprise announcement. “We aim to produce the media’s next generation of image makers, from columnists to digital specialists, covering a wide variety of news and marketing positions,” said Thomas. “Charles Barkley has always been very generous to students in our Journalism and Sports Program on a personal level. I am thrilled that Charles has greatly extended his generosity by donating $1 million to address our growing needs.”
Morehouse President, John S. Wilson, Jr. offered a similar response. “We are profoundly grateful for this contribution, said Wilson. “ Beyond its immediate impact, we hope that it will catalyze additional strategic investments in this impressive program.”
Barkley made the announcement during a conference call for the American Century Championship’s celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe earlier this week. Full details of the gift are being still being worked out between Morehouse and Barkley.
Before laying my head to rest last night, Black Twitter blessed me with something magical. Scrolling through my timeline, I noticed the hashtag #unconventionalblackbeauty, featuring photos of beautiful black faces. Not much different from #blackoutday, an online movement that celebrated black beauty, right?
Wrong.
The difference here was this was an honest discourse about how we define beauty within the black community. And I was so here for it.
In less than 24 hours, the hashtag has received a cosign from artist Talib Kweli and timelines exploded with photos of women and men with full lips, broad noses and kinky hair posing with pride. Because truthfully and ironically, a lot of times when we praise black beauty, we celebrate the features closest to Eurocentric ones.
Read more at How #unconventionalblackbeauty celebrates people like me
The investigation into the shooting death of Tamir Rice by Cleveland police officers has been handed over to prosecutors, who expect to convene a grand jury soon.
A source confirmed the move to ABC News and said that the grand jury will decide whether either of the police officers should stand trial for the 12-year-old's death last November. Cuyahoga County Sheriff Clifford Pinkney has since reiterated the transfer of the findings of their investigation to the prosecutor's office.
Read more: Tamir Rice Police Shooting Case Handed Over to Prosecutors
Police departments would be required to report to the Justice Department any time law enforcement officers are involved in shootings or are the victims of an attack leading to serious injury or death under legislation introduced Tuesday by U.S. Sen. Cory Booker.
The legislation was introduced in response to a series of killings of unarmed black men by police officers in cities such as Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, as well as a spate of attacks on police officers, such as the murders of Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu of New York City, who were shot and killed while sitting their patrol car in Brooklyn in December.
"Our legislation is vital to ensuring we have the data required to make good decisions and implement reform measures that are balanced, objective, and protect the lives of police officers and the public," said Booker (D-N.J.), who introduced the bill with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).
Under the bill, states would be required to report the gender, race, ethnicity, and age of each person shot, injured, or killed; when the shooting occurred; the number of officers and civilians involved; whether the civilian was armed; and what force was used.
Read more: Booker wants police departments to track shootings after Ferguson and Baltimore
An annual report released by Attorney General Chris Koster finds that in 2014, black drivers were 75 percent more likely than white drivers to be stopped for traffic violations in the state of Missouri.
Missouri requires all municipalities to submit traffic stop data to the state, including a driver's race.
Last year's annual report found black drivers were 66 percent more likely to be pulled over on Missouri's roads. This year's report shows the largest racial disparity since the state began collecting data in 2000. That year the disparity was 31 percent.
Read more: Report: Black drivers 75 percent more likely to be stopped
Proceeds from Prince’s “Rally 4 Peace” last month at Royal Farms Arena — the surprise concert announced in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death and the unrest that followed — will be donated to the NAACP’s Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics (ACT-SO) and the city’s YouthWorks and OneBaltimore programs, according to a press release sent by Prince's publicist and first obtained by the Baltimore Sun on Monday afternoon.
The amount of money to be donated was not disclosed. Emails and calls have been made to Prince’s publicist and officials from each organization asking for specific donation figures.
The NAACP ACT-SO is “a yearlong achievement program designed to recruit, stimulate, and encourage high academic and cultural achievement among African-American high school students,” according to its website.
Read more: Recipients of donations from Prince's 'Rally 4 Peace' concert announced
