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In a recent online presentation, editors and researchers working on a first-of-its-kind dictionary of African American English gave a status update on the project. As academics explained their various methodologies, slides displayed behind them showed words that are more often associated with Twitter than Oxford: “Bussin,” virtual attendees were told, means impressive or tasty, while a “boo” is a lover. Those were two of the first 100 words that the Oxford University Press said it had prepared to include in the Oxford Dictionary of African American English, the hopeful result of the three-year research project announced last spring.

Several “national security experts” interviewed for an essay in The Root published on Thursday, attacked the Republican Party, claiming it behaves “like a terror group,” is rife with “terrorist sympathizers,” and should be viewed as “enemy combatants.” The essay, penned by senior reporter Terrell Jermaine Starr and titled “Democrats Are Stuck With a Republican Party Rife With Conspiracy Theorists, Anarchists and Terrorist Sympathizers,” begins by asserting that the GOP is “authoritarian” and only cares for whites. “[W]e have an entire political party that has converted into an authoritarian—albeit Americanized version—style of politics that cares nothing about U.S. democracy or anyone...

Movie star Ben Affleck has another nine slaveholder ancestors from Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia, according to publicly available Census records and genealogy research conducted by Breitbart News. Last week, Affleck admitted that he successfully pressured Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates to edit his Georgia slaveholding ancestor, Benjamin Cole, out of an episode of the PBS series “Finding Your Roots” that featured his family history. This brings the number of Affleck’s known slaveholder ancestors to 12, who owned a total of 214 slaves. The relative ease with which Breitbart News was able to find these nine additional slaveholding...

Editor’s note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series, please take a moment to learn about historian Joel A. Rogers, author of the 1934 book 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof, to whom these “amazing facts” are an homage. Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 92: When President Abraham Lincoln met with free black leaders in 1862, what did he propose? Today marks the anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s “shot heard ’round the world.” I’m referring, of course, to the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation he fired off from the White House on...

For all his accomplishments, Henry Louis Gates might be doomed to being best remembered as the man whose arrest led to the "Beer Summit." But the Harvard prof had something surprising to say on today's Morning Joe: Gates questioned the need for affirmative action for affluent African-Americans, saying instead such programs should seek to help poor people, regardless of race. Gates made the personal political, citing the case of his own two daughters, whom Gates described as having a "privileged" life." Do they really need to benefit from affirmative action?", asked Gates rhetorically. View the video here.

CNN's top executive has all but said that the on-air journalists of color it employs are not ready for prime time, and deployed Mark Whitaker, the former Newsweek editor who recently became a CNN news executive, to talk with the National Association of Black Journalists about finding more suitable ones. In a statement protesting CNN's new fall prime-time lineup that was announced Wednesday and includes no journalists of color, NABJ President Kathy Y. Times said she had raised the issue with Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide. "NABJ Vice President of Broadcast Bob Butler and I talked with President Walton...

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? [taken from October 2010 articles/blog posts]NASA's Islam Outreach Minister Charles BoldenGOP lawmakers are critical of Charles Bolden for leaving last week on a trip to China just as the agency he leads begins pursuing an ambitious new agenda. It is the latest in a series of controversial moves that some speculate could result in Bolden's ouster. A law signed a week ago gives NASA four months or less to develop a dozen different plans for the future, including a detailed report on how it would replace the retiring space shuttle.It's an ambitious schedule, one that NASA...

THANKS to an unlikely confluence of history and genetics — the fact that he is African-American and president — Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to reshape the debate over one of the most contentious issues of America’s racial legacy: reparations, the idea that the descendants of American slaves should receive compensation for their ancestors’ unpaid labor and bondage. There are many thorny issues to resolve before we can arrive at a judicious (if symbolic) gesture to match such a sustained, heinous crime. Perhaps the most vexing is how to parcel out blame to those directly involved in the capture...

Race-Based Student Government by: Alana Goodman, September 24, 2009 Racism is alive and well at the University of Massachusetts. And I’m not talking about the hysterical, trumped-up allegations of racism made by people like Henry Louis Gates and Jimmy Carter at the mere mention of legitimate criticism about Barack Obama’s policies. I mean clear-cut, systematic, institutionalized racism. Just look at our Student Government Association (SGA) By-Laws. As we prepare to swear in our elected representatives to the SGA Senate next week, UMass students should be aware that 13 percent of our SGA Senators will not have even competed in Tuesday’s...

Gibbs blasts CNN for reporting on the Coast Guard's training exercise. But what really stands out is at the bottom of the article. Gibbs said "I tend not to question law enforcement". But didn't Obama say that cops acted stupidly regarding the Gates incident? Didn't Obama basically praise Gates for "questioning authority?"

If Republicans act like Democrats we don’t need Republicans. Obama has a penchant for making HC speeches that alter his intent. Just like his recent 157,929th news conference/HC speech, he indicted the Cambridge Police as “Stupid” while defending his friend, Hahvad Professor Louie Gates. HC was put on the backburner while Barack played racial politics cover-up at a beer fest. Last night, SC Republican, Rep. Joe Wilson blurted out the words “YOU LIE!” after one of the many fibs told by our Dear Leader. Never mind Barack Obama called millions of Americans liars for objecting to what’s actually in House...

The Van Jones story isn't about another radical federal employee or even about President Obama's addiction to executive authority (he has appointed over 30 czars with whom he meets regularly, but he has held just one cabinet meeting since his inauguration). The Van Jones story is about our president: a man who fills the void in his emotional past with "authentic" black men who have no interior struggle for definition. President Obama has incessantly injected himself into racial matters that require no clarification (see Henry Louis Gates Jr.); he has turned every debate into a racial debate (see his 2008...

Obama Hates the White man ... an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil. – Luke 6:45 Barack Obama hates white people – especially white men. Sorry folks, but the truth will set you free! Why else would Obama falsely accuse Sgt. James Crowley and other Cambridge Police officers of "racial profiling" and claim they "acted stupidly" – creating a national racial controversy? For months, I have said that Barack Obama was elected as a result of white fear (guilt) and black racism. Whites voted for him because of guilt and...

Clearly, the White House hoped Obama’s beery bonhomie would induce all of us to put on beer goggles and continue to view him as post-racial. For Crowley and Gates, however, it was an invitation they could not refuse. While Obama and Biden – in shirt sleeves, dressed down to come off as a regular guys – offered their guests a beer, they apparently did not invite the two men to take off the jackets and loosen ties they wore out of deference to the office of the presidency. Just another phony photo op.

CHILMARK - Black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. has received numerous death threats since he accused a white officer of racially profiling him in a controversial arrest last month, prompting Harvard University officials to suggest he consider moving, the professor told a crowd yesterday. “You should die; you’re a racist,” read one e-mail that Gates recalled in his first public appearance since sharing a beer at the White House with President Obama and Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley, who arrested him July 16. The threats forced Gates to change his e-mail address and cell phone number. Crowley was investigating a...

As Dem pundits go, I normally find Kirsten Powers among the more reasonable. But on this afternoon's Fox News Watch, Powers propounded perhaps the most despicable theory yet of the Gates/Crowley incident: that the sergeant "lured" and "tricked" Gates into coming outside so he could arrest him. Panelist Jim Pinkerton had just made the point that it was only the conservative media, by focusing attention on the matter, that saved Sgt. Crowley from a "miserable life in Cambridge" at the hands of Prof. Gates, Harvard, the NAACP et. al, when Powers jumped in . . . View video here.

The Barack Backlash: How Obama's Presidency Has Gone From Deity To Doubtful MAX HASTINGS 01st August 2009 On Thursday night, the most powerful man on earth spent 55 minutes of his priceless time simply sharing a beer with a police officer from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a Harvard professor. This minutely orchestrated media event was designed to rescue Barack Obama from the most idiotic, yet nonetheless damaging, row of his presidency. The American people are convulsed, not with laughter, because the story touches the obsessive issue of racism. It began a fortnight ago, when Professor Louis Gates locked himself out of...

Today, I spoke briefly with a liberal member of California’s education establishment (forgive the obvious tautology), who told me that his Berkeley home had recently been broken into while he was in Washington, D.C. It’s been a wake-up call, he said. We were too lax. We’ll be putting in a security-alarm system. And then came the clincher: “This is a very diverse neighborhood.” Now what would possibly be the relevance of that euphemism to the likelihood of getting burgled, I wonder? Unlike Berkeley intelligentsia, the police actually don’t practice such blatant racial profiling — overwhelmingly, they use observed behavioral and...

Noted magical race healer doesn’t bother to check if his friend, Professor Gates, who needs a cane to walk, can make it down the steps okay.

Race Relations: Two people acted responsibly in Gatesgate and did what they were supposed to do. Only one of them got invited to the White House to have a beer with the president and the professor.We don't know whether Lucia Whalen is a connoisseur of fine brews. We do know she wasn't invited to have one with President Obama, professor Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge, Mass., police department. She should have been. The rabid left would say Whalen "acted stupidly" in reporting a possible crime in progress. Some are in fact saying it. The facts...