June 27, 2015

Marriage Equality Fight Still Not Over After Supreme Court Ruling

Would you say the fight for reproductive rights is over in 2015? I didn’t think so. Much the same can be said for marriage equality, even after yesterday’s landmark Supreme Court ruling. Because no matter how much we may perceive a “rights issue” as finally reaching its pinnacle, in this case, capped by a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling making marriage equality the law in all 50 states, it doesn’t automatically change the minds of the regressive opposition.

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April 25, 2014

The Supreme Court And Affirmative Action

I don’t have to respect the robe, and I don’t have to offer deference to Supreme Court justices if they are wrong. Because at the end of the day, they are still just human beings. So when the Supreme Court ruled this week to uphold Michigan’s ban on affirmative action, they were simply wrong, regardless of statue, regardless of power.

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September 24, 2013

Prison-Industrial Complex Watch: 1.5 Million Floridians Banned From Voting

Sometimes racism is overt and sometimes it’s baked into the system in ways people don’t recognize. We know the judicial system in America discriminates against minorities, especially young black males. When states like Florida take away a person’s ability to vote because he or she was incarcerated, it reinforces the this two-tier justice system. If blacks are more likely to be locked up (even when they commit a particular crime at the same rate as whites), the black community faces greater voter disenfranchisement, both during and after incarceration.

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July 7, 2013

College Admission When You’re White, Privileged And Righteous

Books - photo by ChrisRecently the Supreme Court punted on an affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, sending the case back to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Abigail Fisher, a white woman, applied to the school in 2008 when she was a high school senior. She was rejected, and because, well, she’s white and the school is not color blind, according to Fisher, that means her rejection was discriminatory. You know, there’s a lot of that going around these days. People born into white privilege are increasingly screwed in today’s America. They don’t stand a chance!

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February 23, 2013

Voting Rights Act To Face Supreme Court

The 1965 Voting Rights Act will go before the Supreme Court this week. “Over a century after the Emancipation Proclamation, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act,” said Chris Hayes on “Up” this morning. “Which finally ended decades of routine exclusion of people of color from exercising their right to vote.” Section 5 of the act, which requires Federal scrutiny on voting law changes in southern states, is the specific language being challenged. The argument against Section 5 is that it diminishes the sovereignty of southern states and that the south has changed since the era of Jim Crow.

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November 27, 2012

Eliot Spitzer – Number of the Day: Senate Filibuster Reform

Since President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, Republicans have used the filibuster at an unprecedented rate. Take a look at this chart over at The Atlantic. There is no question filibuster reform is needed as both Democrats and Republicans have increasingly relied upon it when in the minority. But Republicans have taken reckless use of the filibuster to new heights since becoming the minority in the Senate in 2006.

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November 12, 2012

Conservatives, It’s Not Your Country To Take Back

If there was one phrase heard most often during the health care debate in 2009 and 2010 it was “I want my country back.” This phrase, used exclusively by white conservatives, encapsulates the palpable fear felt by a shrinking white majority. This is not a phrase that would be uttered by African-Americans or Latinos, for good reason, and let’s not mince words. — White conservatives are talking about an increasingly diverse country with many more brown and black people, and it scares them to the core.

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