Newsitem List

Thursday, July 23, 2009 :In his fourth prime-time White House news conference, President Obama was asked about last week's arrest of the famed African-American scholar Henry Louis Gates inside his own home last week by a white police officer in Cambridge, Massachusetts who was responding to a report of a possible burglary. Obama criticized the arrest, placing it in context of "a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately."...

Wednesday, July 22, 2009 :One week after the NAACP's 100th anniversary celebrations, we speak to Princeton University professor Cornel West and Carl Dix of the Revolutionary Communist Party about the current state of Black America. West is Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Princeton University and the author of numerous books on race. Dix is a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party and was one of six GI's in 1970 who refused orders to go to Vietnam and served...

Monday, July 20, 2009 :The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or the NAACP, the country's oldest and largest civil rights organization had its 100th anniversary celebrations last week. The biggest event of the week was President Obama's address in Harlem Thursday night. Thousands were in the audience as the President gave his first major speech on race since taking office. We take a look at the history and future of the NAACP with longtime NAACP board chairman, Julian ...

"I like the little black sugar plantation worker who is president of the United States." Article by Steve Rendall, of FAIR, from Counterspin 7/10/09: On June 29, the day he was installed by Honduran coup leaders as the country's new interim foreign minister, Enrique Ortez Colindres repeatedly used racist slurs to describe U.S. president Barack Obama....

Wednesday, July 15, 2009 :An exhaustive review of all 1,994 constitutional cases decided by the Second Circuit during the decade of Judge Sotomayor's service found that Sotomayor is solidly in the mainstream of her colleagues. The Brennan Center For Justice report found Sotamayor voted with the majority of the court in 98.2% of constitutional cases. We speak with the report's author, attorney Monica Youn, and Democracy Now!'s Juan Gonzalez, who's in D.C. covering the hearings....

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 : The Texas State Board of Education is moving toward removing Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall from the social studies curriculum taught to its 4.7 million public school students. According to one of the six “expert reviewers” revising the 1997 curriculum, Chavez “lacks the stature, impact and overall contributions of so many others; and his open affiliation with Saul Alinsky’s movements certainly makes dubious that he is praiseworthy.” Another reviewer concluded tha...

Tuesday, July 14, 2009 :The historic confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor have begun. On Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee debated Sotomayor's qualifications for a permanent seat on the nation's highest court. Democrats praised her extensive judicial experience and the story of her personal progression. Republicans however continued to paint Sotomayor as biased because of her personal background and activism....

Thursday, July 9, 2009 :Thousands of Chinese troops have flooded into the regional capital of the country's western-most Xinjiang province following bloody clashes between the city's Han Chinese and Uighur populations. Four days after the violence that left at least 150 dead and over a thousand injured, reports indicate an unsteady calm has returned to the city of Urumqi. We go to Urumqi to speak with Al Jazeera English correspondent Melissa Chan....

Thursday, July 9, 2009 : Heads of state at the G8 summit in Italy were taken by surprise yesterday when Chinese President Hu Jintao suddenly decided to return home to deal with the ongoing crisis in Xinjiang. Hopes that China could play an important role in discussions on the global financial crisis were punctured by developments in Xinjiang, which underscore the country’s escalating social tensions....

Tuesday, July 7, 2009 :New protests have erupted in China's western Xinjiang region, two days after at least 156 people were killed and over 1,000 wounded in the country's worst ethnic violence in decades. On Tuesday, some 200 ethnic Uyghurs - mostly women - took to the streets to protest over the mass arrest of more than 1,400 people following Sunday's clashes. Later, hundreds of ethnic Han Chinese marched through the streets of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province. The two sides blame e...