by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

“Like ACORN, Sherrod was victimized by a Democratic administration which revels in its willingness to assist the right in throwing its own people under the proverbial bus.” Yet, even when the media narrative shifts to sympathy for Sherrod, it trivializes her heroism, just as it diminished Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to a “dreaming preacher whose fondest wish was to see black and white children join hands and sing ‘Kumbayah.’”

by Anthony Monteiro

Corporate media (and corporate academia) appear to have anointed Peniel E. Joseph as the emerging Black scholar on Black Power and its aftermath – which is cause for dismay. Joseph “‘liberates’ Malcolm and Kwame from the events and ideas that shaped them and their own philosophical reflections upon them. At the same time he frees himself to do what he wishes with their legacies.”

From the established civil rights organizations like the NAACP to legions of elected Democrats and preachers and even people like our good friends at Color of Change, the main activity these days is an endless circling of wagons around the president, defending him against the flood of racist bile that spews daily from the likes of Fox News, the Tea Partyers and naysaying Republicans.  But is that really where so much of our energy and creativity should be going?  Aren't there other urgent matters more deserving of the attention of black America's political leadership, our pastors and spokespeople and self-described activists?   Matters like black mass incarceration, record unemployment, and the sinking of vast resources into multiple wars abroad?