racist

New York State Attorney General Letitia James listens to man who became emotional during a prayer vigil across the street from the TOPS supermarket a day after a mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, May 15, 2022. Seth Harrison/USA Today Network via Reuters

“That was an evil, racist, white supremacist,” Reverend Darius Pridgen said from the pulpit at True Bethel Baptist Church on Sunday. “He literally looked for a zip code that had the highest concentration of African Americans.”

Juliet Vedral 2-23-2022

'Lincoln’s Dilemma,' Apple TV+

Lincoln’s Dilemma, released this month on Apple TV+, presents a complicated version of the 16th president. The four-part series portrays Lincoln as a man of his time and place, wrestling with the culture war of his day: slavery.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) speaks at an immigration rally at the temporary installation of a replica of the Statue of Liberty at Union Station in Washington, D.C. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

The vote could put Trump's fellow Republicans in an awkward position, forcing them either to vote against their leader, who has strong support among conservative voters, or effectively defend his statements, widely described as racist.

Image via REUTERS/Carlos Barria 

The 30-second ad, which was sponsored by Trump's 2020 re-election campaign and which debuted online last week, featured courtroom video of an illegal immigrant from Mexico convicted in the 2014 killings of two police officers, juxtaposed with scenes of migrants headed through Mexico. 

Image via RNS/Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

The condemnation came too little, too late, Jewish groups said.

On Feb. 21, President Trump condemned anti-Semitism, as Jewish leaders had been asking him to do for months.

“The President’s sudden acknowledgement is a Band-Aid on the cancer of Anti-Semitism that has infected his own Administration,” said Steven Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, in a statement on Feb. 21 after Trump called anti-Semitism “horrible.”

Richard Mouw 12-14-2016

Some of my friends have been talking about giving up the “evangelical” label, because of what it has come to be associated with, in this year’s political campaign. I’m not ready to make that move. I spent a good part of the 1960s trying hard not to be an evangelical, but without success.

When I marched for civil rights during my graduate school years, I helped to organize “ban the bomb” marches and protested the Vietnam War. I was clearly out of step with much of the evangelicalism of the day.

AFRICAN AMERICANS around the country are finding it is dangerous to call 911. Jack Lamar Roberson’s family in Waycross, Ga., discovered this the hard way when they placed an urgent call to 911 in October 2013 because his fiancée thought that he had taken an overdose of diabetes medicine.

Instead of sending EMTs, the dispatcher sent the police. Within 20 seconds of being in the house, police shot Roberson nine times, with bullets striking his back, arms, chest, and head as he held his arms up in the air. Although he was a veteran, he did not die from bullet wounds at the hands of strangers in a foreign land. Instead, white police gunned him down in his home.

Killings like this—which could be called anti-black hate crimes by police—are far too common. “Operation Ghetto Storm,” a 2012 report by the Malcolm X Grassroots Project, revealed that white police officers, security guards, or vigilantes kill an unarmed black man, woman, or child every 28 hours in the U.S. In 2012, police officers shot 57 people in Chicago—50 were black, two were white. Miami police officers killed seven black men within eight months in 2011. The Houston-based African-American News & Issues headlined an article this spring: “Open Season on Blacks in Texas: Cops Are Shooting First & Not Asking Questions.”

These police killings of black people emerge out of a culture and system of white supremacy. In such a context, police killing of black people is not a black problem. It is an American problem that shreds the curtains of democracy.

Christian Piatt 4-29-2014
Donald Sterling, By ROBYN BECK / Getty Images

Donald Sterling, By ROBYN BECK / Getty Images

Donald Sterling, eccentric billionaire and owner – at least for the moment – of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, learned firsthand the weight of his own words on Tuesday. After allegedly being recorded making numerous racist remarks about African-Americans (both on his team and otherwise), the National Basketball Association handed him a lifetime suspension from association with his own team, along with a $2.5 million fine.

Though Sterling’s comments were highly inflammatory and distasteful, the NBA’s swift and severe consequences helps contain the damage, keeping the poison from infecting the league’s reputation any more than it already has. And good riddance to such attitudes, as they should find no audience in any public forum, let alone in a sport where a majority of the players are black.

Sterling’s consequence is not why I feel pity for him. He got what he deserved, and the stigma that goes with such shunning likely will weigh on his future business ventures. What saddens me for him is the sense I have of him as an individual, having read extensively about him online, and having listened to the audiotapes attributed to him.

Lisa Sharon Harper 4-29-2014
Donald Sterling in 2009, s_bukley / Shutterstock.com

Donald Sterling in 2009, s_bukley / Shutterstock.com

I almost felt sorry for Donald Sterling when I listened to the original recording of an alleged argument between him and his ex-girlfriend, V. Stiviano, released by TMZ Sports on Saturday. The argument centers around Stivianio’s friendship with black and Hispanic people. The desperation in Sterling’s alleged voice is palpable as he tries to scurry like a cockroach exposed by the light, but doesn’t get away.

The day after TMZ released the recording, Deadspin released an extended version of the tiff with transcript included. In this recording, the cockroach is caught for examination under the proverbial glass. From the Deadspin report:

V: I don't understand. I don't see your views. I wasn't raised the way you were raised.

DS: Well then, if you don't feel—don't come to my games. Don't bring black people, and don't come.

V: Do you know that you have a whole team that's black, that plays for you?

DS: You just, do I know? I support them and give them food, and clothes, and cars, and houses. Who gives it to them? Does someone else give it to them?...

Sterling does not “support them.” He pays them for work. He does not “give them food.” He gives them a wage for employment. He does not give his players “clothes, and cars, and houses.” The Clippers Corporation signs a paycheck, made possible by advertising dollars and ticket sales attracted by the highly skilled labor of the mostly black and brown Clippers players themselves.

Anna Hall 11-07-2013
Andrey Burmakin / Shutterstock.com

Andrey Burmakin / Shutterstock.com

Duane Buck currently sits on death row in a Texas jail cell partly because he is black. He has been held since his 1997 capital sentencing hearing, which was influenced by blatantly racist testimony.  Trial prosecutors relied on erroneous “expert testimony” provided by psychologist Walter Quijano, who claimed African-Americans are more liable to commit future acts of violence than non-African-Americans.

Swayed by the misinformation, jury members accepted as truth Quijano’s claims. According to Texas law, a jury finding of “future dangerousness” is a prerequisite for a death sentence.  Consequently, Buck was convicted in the fatal shootings of Debra Gardner and Kenneth Butler and issued the death penalty.

Join us in calling on the Harris County District Attorney's Office to give Duane Buck a fair sentencing hearing.

There are times in our faith walk when we pray prayers out of simple obedience.
Kiran Thadhani 3-16-2011
"Reality check: Gandhi's in hell."
"Really? Gandhi's in hell? And we have confirmation of this?"

Lisa Sharon Harper 3-10-2011

At the climax of The King's Speech, I held my breath with the rest of the packed audience and hoped to God that history was kind to King George VI.

John Fleming 11-16-2010

[Editors' Note: Former state trooper James Bonard Fowler plead guilty this week to a misdemeanor manslaughter charge in the 1965 shooting of Jimmie Lee Jackson in Alabama.

Jim Rice 9-09-2010
The night before Glenn Beck's rally in Washington last month, Beck visited the studio where host Joe Madison does his XM radio show.
Johnathan Smith 7-29-2010
I want to tell you a story. It's a tale about drugs, prison, race, and justice (or the lack thereof).

Jim Wallis 5-27-2010
The insurgent Tea Party and its Libertarian philosophy is a political phenomenon, not a religious one.
Edith Rasell 5-04-2010
As someone who lives in Cleveland -- which in some years is identified as the poorest city in the U.S.
Grace Biskie 4-30-2010
At eight months pregnant, I had a dream my new baby boy was born. He came out with pale white skin, blue eyes, and long, pin-straight red hair. He didn't look like he belonged to me at all.