Commentary

D.C. is the Nation’s HIV/AIDS Capital

Thursday, 19 March 2009 14:27 George E Curry, NNPA Columnist

The disclosure that more than 4 percent of Blacks in the District of Columbia have HIV, matching San Francisco’s city-wide rate at the height of the epidemic in 1992, is but one example of how the disease is devastating the Black community. D.C. health officials made public a report Monday that showed the overall HIV/AIDS city rate of 3 percent is three times the level considered a “generalized and severe” epidemic.

The Congressional Black Caucus – A powerful majority of one

Thursday, 19 March 2009 13:57 Marc H. Morial, NNPA Columnist

Last month, a small but influential group of African Americans was invited to the White House to discuss its priorities with President Barack Obama.

A look at race, incarceration, and American values

Monday, 16 March 2009 14:18 Marian Wright Edelman, NNPA Columnist

Glenn Loury, a professor in the Department of Economics at Brown University, has long been one of the nation’s most outspoken Black intellectuals.

For many years he was a leading conservative voice on topics like affirmative action, and whenever he focuses on a policy issue affecting the Black community, people pay attention. In his title essay in the recent book, Race, Incarceration, and American Values, Professor Loury sounds the alarm on some of the same concerns the Children's Defense Fund has been raising when we talk about the pipeline to prison crisis.

Making Black History by investing in the future

Monday, 16 March 2009 14:14 Esther Sliver-Parker

Black History Month 2009 is now history itself, but new Black history is made every day by African Americans who are willing to share their time, talent and resources with the larger Black community. Everyone gets the opportunity sooner or later, sometimes in surprising ways.

At the precipice of change: The budget

Thursday, 12 March 2009 12:20 Ron Walters, NNPA Columnist

With lightening speed, President Barack Obama has moved from stimulus package to a home foreclosure package, to working on the financial bailout package, and now to the budget.

An African American depression

Thursday, 12 March 2009 12:18 Julianne Malveaux, NNPA Columnist

I was watching the periphrastic pundit, actor and neo-economist Ben Stein on CBS Sunday morning pontificating.

He said that if President Obama offered more happy talk, more conviction that times would get better, then they would.

American jobs are worth fighting for

Thursday, 12 March 2009 12:15 R. Thomas Buffenbarger

In January alone, 598,000 jobs were lost. More than 200,000 of those jobs were lost in the manufacturing sector. The employment rate now stands at a staggering 7.6 percent. The global credit crunch has, finally and decisively, thrown the gears of growth into reverse.