"Our national conversations about poverty -- so entangled with race in unspoken ways -- have rendered the white poor invisible and the black poor pathological, and undermined our attempts to gain majority support for anti-poverty programs."
Read the article here.
What does the apparent rise in atheism and agnosticism (pdf) among blacks tell us about the utility of religion for African Americans in today's social and political climate? Interviews with academics, activists and advocates from everywhere on the religious spectrum reveal the diversity of views on this historically fraught -- and, for many, highly personal -- topic.
For the fifth in the series, The Root talked to Zaheer Ali.
Read the interview here.
African Americans, Atheism, Christianity, Islam, Religion, The Root in Web Hosted by Philp Dodd for BBC Radio 3's "Night Waves," I joined Richard Brent Turner (author of Islam in the African-American Experience) and Mark Ledwidge (author of Race and US Foreign Policy: The African-American Foreign Affairs Network) in a conversation about the implications of Dr. Manning Marable's Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. We discussed Malcolm X's relationship to Islam, his legacy in a so-called "post-racial" America, and the enduring legacy of Islam in the African-American community.
Listen to the program here (or click here to download):
African Americans, BBC, Islam, Malcolm X, Manning Marable, Richard Turner in Radio Reports from Egypt indicate that anti-government turnout is among the biggest it has been in the past two weeks. As Egyptians continue to demand their rights from the Mubarak government, Zaheer Ali, a doctoral student of history at Columbia University, claims that African Americans in particular can do more to support the desires of the Egyptian people. Ali, who recently wrote the essay “Crisis in Egypt: Their Problem is Our Problem” for TheRoot.com, is currently studying the history of Egyptian and African-American relationships.
Listen to the program here.
African Americans, Egypt, Michael Eric Dyson in Radio The people of Egypt are looking to African Americans for solidarity in their struggle, just as we once looked to them in our own efforts to gain freedom and civil rights. When will we speak up for them?
Read the article here.
African Americans, Egypt, Malcolm X, The Root in Web Last week, Congressional Republicans read the Constitution aloud on the House floor, but they didn’t read the parts of the original document referring to slavery. Zaheer Ali, a doctoral student of history at Columbia University, is one of the people who noticed that omission, and wrote an article about it for TheRoot.com.
Listen to the program here (segment starts at 13:40).
African Americans, Congress, Constitution, Michael Eric Dyson, Slavery in Radio In reading the hallowed document on the House floor, Republicans tried to avoid the parts that referred to people as property, but this was as ineffective as censoring Huckleberry Finn.
Read the article here.
African Americans, Congress, Constitution, Slavery, The Root in Web
Long before Sept. 11, African-American Muslims were the targets of anti-Muslim fears.
Read the article here.
African Americans, Islam, Islamophobia, Muslims, The Root in Web