Want to know what’s wrong with the War on Drugs?

Racial Equity — March 11, 2010 at 6:12 am

By Madhuri Mohindar and Ishita Srivastava It’s the first time that 1 in every 100 adult Americans is in prison, proof of an exploding prison system that our country can ill afford and a movement away from rehabilitation programs. Even more disturbing are the racial disparities within the prison system. More than 60% of people in prison are racial and ethnic minorities which means that 1 in every 36 Hispanic...

Want to know what’s wrong with the War on Drugs?

March 11th, 2010 | Racial Equity | Read More

Stop the racist attacks on our children

Originally published in Indian Country Today Just as we think we’re making progress, another hate crime rears its ugly head. And this time, it’s against our children. Last week the Web site UsedWinnipeg.com ran an advertisement headlined “Native Extraction Service” with a photograph of three...

March 11th, 2010 | American Indians, Featured | Read More

What “Precious” tells us about images Of blackness

Originally published on NewsOne Image is everything. Whoever said that was apparently right, especially in the Los Angeles area, home of the movie industry, the recent Academy Awards and the annual Wadsworth Elementary School Black History Month parade. All have been in the news lately highlighting...

March 11th, 2010 | Pop culture | Read More

How the War on Drugs gave birth to a permanent American undercaste

Originally published on TomDispatch.com Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation’s “triumph over race.” Obama’s election...

March 10th, 2010 | Featured | Read More

Talking effectively about race and policy in an Obama Era

Conventional wisdom says “Stay away from race. It’s a distraction at best and polarizing at worst.” With a Black president, this advice seems to be repeated louder and more often than before. Unfortunately, for those interested in progressive policy, President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress...

March 10th, 2010 | Featured, Transforming Race Conference | Read More

Policing gender and sex through sport

In January, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) convened a so-called gender symposium in which medical ‘experts’ concluded that intersex athletes should be treated as having a medical disorder, and that eligibility of such athletes be decided on a case-by-case basis. They also suggested that...

March 9th, 2010 | Featured, Women | Read More

Does “Asian America” leave some Asian Americans behind?

I had lunch a few months ago with Bill Tamayo, the regional attorney in San Francisco for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. We both have roots in Hawai‘i. Tamayo is a second-generation Filipino American. I’m a fourth-generation Japanese American. Many would consider us both “Asian...

March 8th, 2010 | Featured | Read More

Teen suicide and infant mortality in Indian Country rising

The British statesman, Benjamin Disraeli, purportedly said, “There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies and statistics.” Native Americans have been the guinea pigs of statistics since the politicians in Washington began to use arithmetic to figure out their landholdings and numbers...

March 8th, 2010 | Featured | Read More

Time for US revolution – fifteen reasons

It is time for a revolution. Government does not work for regular people. It appears to work quite well for big corporations, banks, insurance companies, military contractors, lobbyists, and for the rich and powerful. But it does not work for people. The 1776 Declaration of Independence stated...

March 8th, 2010 | Featured | Read More

Does your race and income matter if face the death penalty?

It is no secret that our country’s criminal justice system has consistently proven to be biased against minority communities of color. Statistics published by the NAACP show that even amongst those found guilty of crimes, African-Americans continue to be disproportionately sentenced to life in prison,...

March 5th, 2010 | Racial Equity, Talk About Race, US | Read More

Also about us: South Asians and civil rights

Every year, the South Asian Bar Association of New York (SABANY) awards fellowships to law students who will be pursuing unpaid summer internships in the public interest. The fellowship winners are recognized at a reception, where an experienced South Asian public interest attorney speaks about a current...

March 5th, 2010 | Featured, South Central/South Asia | Read More

A reflection on the wages of whiteness: Violence and the politics of privilege in the UAH shootings

The faculty shooting at the University of Alabama – Huntsville in February, in which Amy Bishop, a white faculty member, murdered three of her colleagues of color and wounded three others after being denied tenure for a second time, is the most recent evidence of how hard it is to talk about race in...

March 4th, 2010 | Talk About Race | Read More

King and the Palestinian struggle for freedom

In two of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s most memorable writings, his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and his 1967 speech, “Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence,” he bemoaned the failure of Americans to speak out, to break their silence when witnessing injustice and immoral acts against humankind. ...

March 4th, 2010 | Featured | Read More

Looking ahead to 9/11/2011: The time for national healing begins now

In mid-February, people around the country marked the National Day of Remembrance to acknowledge the impact of Executive Order 9066, which led to the internment of 120,000 Japanese American citizens and residents during World War II on the basis of their national origin and ethnicity. It has been over...

March 4th, 2010 | Featured, South Central/South Asia | Read More

Facing the Other: Challenging Islamophobia within the South Asian community

In the nearly 10 years since September 11, progressive writers of color have written a great deal about Islamophobia and the U.S. wars against majority Muslim countries. A lot of this commentary has centered on white mainstream politics and the U.S. government’s flawed response to 9/11 encompassing...

March 3rd, 2010 | Featured, South Central/South Asia | Read More

Cold Case: Coming to grips with racial killings in America

The U.S. Justice Department is about to conclude its three-year investigation of 108 unsolved civil rights era murders, including that of Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was shot and killed in 1965 by Alabama state trooper James Bonard Fowler. Other than Fowler, however, who was charged with murder in 2007,...

March 3rd, 2010 | Talk About Race | Read More