Published: 12/9/2009
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
Has feminism been replaced by the pink-ribbon breast cancer cult? When the House of Representatives passed the Stupak amendment, which would take abortion rights away even from women who have private insurance, the female response ranged from muted to inaudible. A few weeks later, when the United S...[MORE]
Published: 10/21/2009
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
Sometimes it's funny what people find funny. Some people can take a serious issue and have you laughing uncontrollably before you stop for a moment and wonder just what you're laughing at. Comedian Wanda Sykes does just that in her recently debuted HBO concert special I'ma Be Me. Her work pokes ho...[MORE]
Published: 9/30/2009
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
For more than 50 years, Esther Lupyan kept to herself memories of the "monsters." Monsters that imprisoned her father. Monsters that forced her and her mother to live in a ghetto, behind barbed wire, in constant fear of death. Monsters that killed her 12-year-old brother. Monsters tha...[MORE]
Published: 8/26/2009
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
Sometime in the mid-1980s I was with a group of poets at a café. We were young and excited because Dudley Randall was among us. Randall, poet laureate of Detroit, founder of Broadside Press and editor of the exciting anthology The Black Poets, was a gigantic figure in my mind, although his calm, nea...[MORE]
Published: 7/29/2009
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
If the po-po shows up at Madea's house, we all know the larger-than-life movie sista is going to jail. We also know that she is not going quietly into the still night. Talk about getting loud! Madea is going to spread the pain far and wide before she goes down. Madea is a fictional character. Henr...[MORE]
Published: 7/15/2009
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
I didn't catch the Black in America series on CNN last year. Apparently I had my head in a hole, or maybe I was busy watching Kwame Kilpatrick go up in flames. However, I've already watched this season's Black in America 2 twice — and it hasn't even aired yet. I saw the not-quite-finished ve...[MORE]
Published: 3/25/2009
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
It's difficult for me to say Cobo Center. That's not because I have a speech impediment. It's just that I'm a native and lifelong Detroiter and I grew up calling the place Cobo Hall. Even after some 23 years of a not-so-new name, it just doesn't roll off my tongue.But, these days, it's hard to...[MORE]
Published: 2/11/2009
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
Market forces Admitting Detroit students to one but not the other of Ferndale's public high schools amounts to racial segregation, says Donna Stern, an organizer with the civil rights group By Any Means Necessary (BAMN).And, as the school district has refused to make changes to BAMN's satisfact...[MORE]
Published: 2/4/2009
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
Deborah Drennan hopes there are better times ahead for the people she serves. As the interim director of Freedom House, a Detroit shelter for people who have applied for asylum here and in Canada, Drennan says America's current immigration policy is both too focused on combating terrorism and ...[MORE]
Published: 1/21/2009
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
One of my favorite places in Washington, D.C., especially on nice, not-too-hot autumn days, is the great open-air mall between the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol. It was crowded Monday, with workmen installing seats and setting up TV screens. That's when I saw him, sitting on a park bench, lo...[MORE]
Published: 11/19/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
News Hits visited last week's big Voices for Action Poverty Summit at Cobo to catch a rousing speech by Martin Luther King III.The son of the slain civil rights leader did not disappoint, delivering a message equal parts outrage over economic injustices that have "families wading through the h...[MORE]
Published: 11/19/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
I feel a lot better post-election 2008 than I did the last two times around. In 2004, it was weeks before I could watch the news for fear of seeing George W. Bush and his smarmy smirk.This year, as the euphoria ebbs over electing Barack Obama next president of the United States, talk has moved...[MORE]
Published: 11/12/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
Wouldn't it have been something to have been able to bring Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. back Nov. 4, and have sat them down, invisible, in Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church?Imagine sitting them in front of the two giant TV screens the church had put up for this night, a night most ...[MORE]
Published: 10/22/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
Oakland County has bowling alleys where Joe Six Pack rolls, mansions on the waterfront where the wealthy live and play, and plenty of middle-class neighborhoods where white- and blue-collar alike worry about their house payments and job security. Among its 61 cities and townships, it has plenty...[MORE]
Published: 7/30/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
It seems that Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick just can't help playing the bad boy.Last week he held one of his ongoing "Conversation with the Mayor" gatherings with local performing artists. I was among the 200 or so guests gathered on the riverfront behind Manoogian Mansion as the sun set that evening...[MORE]
Published: 7/30/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
From: Grand Wizard Jeeter B. Fatback, Imperial Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. To: All Kleagles, Skinheads, Neo-Nazis and Various Unaffiliated Racists who Define Theyselves as White. Excepting the Many FBI Agents Who May Now Be a Majority of Our Ranks (Damn Them!)Re: Need To Get Behind Komra...[MORE]
By Jim McFarlin
Published: 7/23/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
Forty years. For those of us unfortunate enough to have lived through it and blessed enough to still be around, at times it can seem like last month. I remember vividly the look of anguish mixed with shock and devastation in my mother's eyes that April morning, a hollow gaze never seen before ...[MORE]
Published: 5/28/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
Reported violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people more than doubled in Michigan last year, a reminder that it's not safe out there, says Sean Kosofsky, director of policy for the Triangle Foundation. "People really don't believe this is going on. Polling shows that peopl...[MORE]
Published: 5/14/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
"In the past 30 days, I've been called a nigger more than any time in my entire life." Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick made that shocking statement during the explosive finale to his State of the City speech on March 11. And immediately, alarm bells began sounding in the collective mind that is ...[MORE]
Published: 4/30/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
As a new member of the Riverwood Community Church in Sterling Heights 19 months ago, Karen Liedigk attended women's Sunday school classes and Thursday night Bible study. She went to regular services and was in the Christmas play. "Everything was fine. I was well-accepted in the church," she exp...[MORE]
Published: 4/30/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
I went to see the Rev. Jeremiah Wright — now known from sea to shining sea as the Rev. "God Damn America" Wright — speak the other night to the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Cobo Hall. Like all loyal Americans who have been subjected to constant bombardment of the famous YouTube vide...[MORE]
Published: 4/23/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
The other day I drove over to Covenant House, which is on Martin Luther King Boulevard, not very far southwest of my office at Wayne State University.A small, valiant band of folks there do more good for the city of Detroit every week than most politicians will ever do in a lifetime. They offe...[MORE]
Published: 4/16/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
When it was brought to News Hits' attention that the largest Nazi organization in the United States — the National Socialist Movement — had moved its headquarters to the city of Detroit, we spent a fair amount of time being outraged. We were mostly insulted by the audacity — a...[MORE]
Published: 4/9/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
When I was 10 years old, my friends and I freely wandered our neighborhood on Detroit's west side. That included exploring the alleys and rooftops around the slaughterhouses at Michigan Avenue and Humboldt, hopping onto the sides of moving freight trains at the overpass near Grand River and Wa...[MORE]
Published: 3/19/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
As Black History Month came and went once again, a small, little-known museum dedicated to a local part of that history saw few visitors and little attention.The Curtis Museum, on McNichols Road west of Schaefer Highway on the city's west side, commemorates the life of Dr. Austin Curtis, an as...[MORE]
Published: 2/6/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
The battlefields are public opinion, the courts, Congress and state legislatures. And gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered activists point to strategic victories — plus the promise of more — despite well-publicized setbacks.Recent successes include the U.S. Supreme Court ruling...[MORE]
Published: 2/6/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
Here's what it is, reduced to the bare essentials. The mayoral scandal can be boiled down to these next two paragraphs:Detroit's highest and most powerful elected official, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, secretly ordered a deputy police chief fired in an effort to prevent him from uncovering the mayo...[MORE]
Published: 1/30/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
"Don't let them talk about y'all's boy!" —Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick, 2005 Mama Kilpatrick, I'm talking about your boy. In his new book, Sellout, The Politics of Racial Betrayal (Pantheon Books, 2008), author Randall Kennedy examines how and why various African-American figures ha...[MORE]
Published: 1/23/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
Hard to imagine now that we're just getting interested, but the race for the Democratic presidential nomination may well be over in two weeks. We don't have many preliminary bouts left. The Democrats will vote in South Carolina this Saturday (why that state runs two primaries a week apart is be...[MORE]
Published: 1/16/2008
Types: News, Race & Prejudice
Officially, the issue is about parking. The owner of a building in Wyandotte has 26 parking spaces. The city says 119 spaces are required for a private club to open on the site. The building owner is scheduled to go before the city's Zoning Board of Appeals tonight (Wedn...[MORE]
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