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Some Thoughts on Recent Tragedies and Racial Tensions Msgr. Charles Pope • July 10, 2016 • For some twenty-four of my twenty-seven years as a priest I have lived in and ministered to largely African-American parishes and communities. It has been a great blessing to me spiritually, liturgically, and personally.As you may imagine, I get a lot of questions from people when racially charged events appear in the news. I’m asked what my parishioners think as well as what I think.This past week began with the death of two African-American men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, in interactions with...

People have had a lot to say on Colin Kaepernick's decision to protest the national anthem, but there is one undeniable fact: It has impacted how we watch football. Now it's being recognized again. Kaepernick is getting his own exhibit in the National Museum of African American History.

The National Institutes of Health has chosen four community partners to join its All of Us precision medicine research program, which seeks to gather data from at least one million people in the United States to improve health. The program is part of the Precision Medicine Initiative created by President Barack Obama in 2015 and was formerly known as the PMI Cohort. The partners will receive a combined $1.7 million to raise awareness about the research program among African Americans, Hispanics and Latinos, seniors and the LGBTQ communities. Researchers will use the data collected from the program to learn how...

Multiple people used chairs to viciously beat one another at a Bronx, New York, family restaurant, according to police and video footage of the incident. Video captured the chaos at Seafood City on City Island Avenue. The fight kicked off at 9:45pm on Thursday night, police said. People can be seen tossing and using chairs as shields in the restaurant's large dining room.

Ivanka Trump has expanded her research on economic policy with a visit to a Baltimore center for minority-owned small businesses. A White House official confirmed the Wednesday visit to the Raymond V. Haysbert Center for Entrepreneurship at the Greater Baltimore Urban League. The official said Trump participated in a round table discussion with business owners....

Monday on MSNBC while evaluating President Donald Trump’s election victory over Hillary Clinton, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) said Democrats are making a “very very serious mistake” taking the African-American vote “for granted.”

Many African-Americans are expressing outrage over a testy exchange between President Donald Trump and a veteran black journalist, with many considering the incident to be the latest indication of his inability to relate to them. Already skeptical of Trump, many blacks said they were exasperated by the fact that, during his news conference on Thursday, the new president asked April Ryan, longtime White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks, to help broker a meeting for him with black lawmakers. "Will you meet with the Congressional Black Caucus?" Ryan asked. Trump responded: "I would. You want to set up the...

Police and criminal justice reform are just the beginning. Donald Trump repeatedly expressed hostility towards Black Lives Matter activists during his presidential campaign, particularly for their efforts to confront police brutality. Now, faced with a Trump agenda whose repercussions for African Americans could reach far beyond policing, BLM organizers say they are broadly expanding their mission. Ever since a police officer killed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the Black Lives Matter movement has grown into a loose-knit web of like-minded groups nationwide that focus primarily on ending police brutality and the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans. Last August, a...

President Trump kicked off February by inviting leaders from the black community to the White House to engage in dialogue and hash out solutions. Day one of Black History Month was the perfect time to dive into what he vowed while on the campaign trail: address the needs within communities of color. The “forgotten man and woman” was a recurring Trump theme in the 2016 election. One could make the case that despite the obvious irony, no group was as forgotten during the last eight years as black Americans, many of whom find themselves living in violent Chicago neighborhoods, lacking...

Not long after President Donald Trump was sworn in, we happened to run into the Rev. Jesse Jackson on the street. He gave a thumbs-up to Trump’s inauguration speech but said the new commander in chief has much work to do in order to unify a nation riven by a divisive campaign. “The speech was full of hope and inclusion and he reached out to cities in a way they’ve not been reached out to for a long time,” he said. “But with that must come a target, a timetable and a budget.” Trump’s speech hit many of the populist...

African Americans are quick to snatch somebody's black card.For the uninitiated, taking someone's black card is tantamount to kicking an offending party out of the proverbial club. It's a way of saying, "You're no longer one of us," as in, "Stacey Dash be gone." --SNIP-- "Conservative blacks are being intimidated by liberal blacks," he tweeted. "Why take my black card because I don't think like you? Why?" I called Lusk, a former Eagles running back, Tuesday to see if he cared to elaborate and I got an earful.

President-elect Donald Trump responded to backlash over his attack on Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) on Saturday evening, suggesting the pair work together to focus on the nation's inner cities. “Congressman John Lewis should finally focus on the burning and crime infested inner-cities of the U.S. I can use all the help I can get!” Trump wrote. *snip* Trump raised the issue of inner cities during the campaign. In August, he compared the nation's inner cities to war zones, declaring during a campaign stop in Ohio, “The Democrats have failed completely in the inner cities." “For those hurting the most, who...

Trump to visit National African American Museum: report © Getty Images President-elect Donald Trump is expected to visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, ABC News reported Saturday citing transition sources. NEW: Donald Trump expected to visit National African American Museum in observance of Martin Luther King Day, transition sources tell @ABC. — ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) January 14, 2017 Trump's visit to the museum comes amid backlash from Democrats and some Republicans over Trump claiming in tweets Saturday that Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) was "all talk" and "no action."

I know, I know. January 11 is very early to declare something as the "_____ of the year." But trust me on this.First, some background information. Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) is the only African-American Republican member of the Senate. He has also publicly supported Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) for attorney general. William Smith, an African American who formerly served as Sessions' counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee, also has gone on the record to defend his former employer from accusations of racism.Naturally, "tolerant" liberals didn't take this very well. In a now-deleted tweet aimed at Scott and Smith, Twitter user...

WASHINGTON – A group of African-American religious leaders endorsed Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) as the next U.S. attorney general and pushed back against Rev. Al Sharpton’s criticism of Sessions’ nomination. “Now allegations have been made that Senator Sessions is a racist; however, an examination of his record proves otherwise. As a U.S. attorney for the state of Alabama, he prosecuted Klansman Henry Francis Hays, as has been mentioned earlier. Henry Francis Hays was the son of Bennie Hays, who was one of the leading members of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan,” Rev. Ralph Chittams of the Forestville New Redeemer Baptist...

“We cannot and should not legitimize the transfer of authority to a right-wing populist who has neo-fascist orientations,” Kali Akuno told AlterNet over the phone. “We shouldn’t legitimize that rule in any form or fashion. We need to build a program of being ungovernable.” As the co-director of the Mississippi-based group Cooperation Jackson and an organizer with the nationwide Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Akuno is one of countless people across the country working diligently to build a platform sturdy enough to confront Trump’s America. Movimiento Cosecha, led by undocumented people and immigrants, is planning to go on the offensive to...

For almost eight years, the members of the Congressional Black Caucus existed in the shadow of the first black president. They praised President Barack Obama’s achievements while at the same time pushing him to do more for their constituents who overwhelmingly supported his history-making campaign and administration. But with Obama set to leave the White House on Jan. 20, black lawmakers in the House and Senate are recalculating and reassessing their place in Washington. And realizing they’re regaining the limelight as the most visible and powerful African-American politicians in the nation’s capital. President-elect Donald Trump will face a larger and...

“I don’t want my alma mater to give the appearance of supporting him,” Ferrill said Monday. “Ignore, decline or whatever, but please don’t send our band out in our name to do that.” “After how black people were treated at Trump’s rallies, you’re going to go and shuck and jive down Pennsylvania Avenue? For what?” Seinya SamForay said in an interview. “What they did is a slap in the face to other black universities.”

China got it wrong: 2017 is not the year of the rooster—it’s the year of the white male. 2017 is the year the white man takes back his worth. Black Male Supremacists. Unheard of. Brown Male Supremacists. Unheard of. Because it’s only trendy for American elites to bash white males. Especially white males who never owned slaves; white males who never “stole” land from Native Americans or Mexicans; and white males who never hired an unqualified male over a qualified female in the workplace. How do white men handle the hatred hurled their way? Good question. I’ve prepared a...

After the shocking results of the 2016 election, most analysts focused on the shift among working-class whites towards Donald Trump. However, there was another seismic transformation on election day that may have longer repercussions: young black men are leaving the Democratic Party like never before. Exit polls of the nationwide House races showed two important numbers, black men and millennials voted for the GOP in numbers that hadn’t been seen in decades. According to CNN exit polls, 18 percent voted of black men for a Republican candidate for the U.S. House, which is more than three times the number of...