801 Search results for "american history"

It’s a problem that we still allow ignorance to turn cultures into threats and let fear change constitutional rights into a compromise of sanctity or national security. It is moments like this that I am most disappointed to be human, to be American, the moments when people choose to not allow others to live freely. […]

If the Southern segregationists had to assemble an ideal 4 X 100 meter relay team they would probably be unstoppable. Senator Trent Lott would be the first leg. Since he believes that all the problems in the United States could’ve been avoided had Strom Thurmond been elected President in 1948, he will get a fast […]

This weekend was interesting, to say the least. I spent Sunday at the Texas Gun Show. While I expected strange, maybe even interesting, I was unprepared for some of it. Guns and weapons don’t shake me. On display, they cause no panic. Some of the other things on display however, were enough to make me […]

Obama’s Youthful Voters More Likely to Skip Midterms Megan Thee-Brenan, New York Times | August 10, 2010 Will all of those young, enthusiastic Obama voters turn out in 2010? If history is any guide, probably not. Older voters are historically more likely to cast ballots in midterm elections than are voters under the age of […]

Since I only write here at BYP on Mondays, the blogging silence of the other six days often results in hateration build up.  Fortunately, I take notes.  What follows is a rather desultory dose of scathing haterade for your Monday morning.  Who needs caffeine? Feel my body! gettin’ cooooold. As a friend said on Facebook, […]

In 1926, Dr. Carter G. Woodson christened the second week in February “Negro History Week”. Dr. Woodson chose the second week in February because two men he considered influential to Black Americans, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, were born during that week. From there, Negro History Week has expanded and grown into Black History Month. […]

Last week, the folks over at Racialicious re-posted a piece by Macon D., the creator of the blog, Stuff White People Do.  The article, “Stuff White People Do: Warmly Embrace a Racist Novel,” addresses the 50th anniversary celebration of Harper Lee’s only novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, published in the summer of 1960.  Macon D. […]

Thriller, released three years later, took things to another level entirely however, and deserves all of the fanfare and acclaim that it receives. But before Thriller there was Off The Wall, the coming out party for an ambitious teen idol that wanted to take over the world, one song at a time. Jackson may have made more successful albums, but he never bettered this one.

Medical and construction supplies, food, water filtration equipment, in addition to supporters from abroad sailed toward Gaza (a tiny strip of land controlled and blockaded by Israel but inhabited by Palestinians) in attempts to provide relief, or rather…sustenance. (…because even these flotillas would not have been able to relieve the suffering in the occupied Palestinian […]

It seems we’ve reached a new type of nadir in American race relations. The status quo has been threatened. All of this talk about a new majority has roused some sort of fear down in Arizona and it doesn’t seem like that State is enthusiastic about joining the new Post Racial America. And the legislation […]

Despite Harriet Beecher Stowe’s best intentions, her character Uncle Tom has become a pejorative term aimed at black American’s accused of selling out to white folks. In the novel, he was supposed to be a good man, a Christian man, but it was Christianity that led him to, even under questionable conditions (say slavery), continue […]

“Malcolm X is too dangerous. He was too radical. We can’t celebrate that.” –Anonymous Friend on why we don’t celebrate Malcolm X in the same way that we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I cringe when I hear people say that Malcolm X is “too dangerous” or “too radical”. He was entirely too complex […]