Free Republic

The leader of a US Cuban exile group has slammed 1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jones after she claimed Cuba had the 'least inequality between black and white people' thanks to its socialist government. Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat spoke out against the New York Times journalist Tuesday after a 2019 podcast where she called the communist country one of the most 'equal' in the world, resurfaced online. The Havana-born scholar, who is based in Miami, said Hannah-Jones's remarks do not 'reflect the reality of Cuban history', noting there has actually been a lack of black leadership on the island since the 1959 revolution...

I am a black American intellectual living in an age of persistent racial inequality in my country. As a black man I feel compelled to represent the interests of “my people.” (But that reference is not unambiguous!) As an intellectual, I feel that I must seek out the truth and speak such truths as I am given to know. As an American, at this critical moment of “racial reckoning,” I feel that imperative all the more urgently. But, I ask, what are my responsibilities? Do they conflict with one another? I will explore this question tonight.

Potential locked up in prisons By LEWIS W. DIUGUID The Kansas City Star Angela Davis drew many parallels between slavery and today's growth of the prison industrial complex. Each is a profitable economic system, Davis told more than 500 people last week at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Slavery boosted the economy of the South, where U.S. wealth until 1865 was concentrated. Prisons today are a boon to rural communities, creating jobs, new housing, restaurants, hotels and other feeder industries. Inmate labor also generates capital. Like slavery, "we've reached the point where the prison economy is not marginal to the...