America’s first “Black President” could teach Barack Obama about reaching out to Black Americans. Unlike Bill Clinton & Crew, Obama and his advisers lack the central African-American experience needed to understand and engage Black Americans.

“Politics without economics is symbol without substance” – Minister Louis Farrakhan

August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. The landmark legislation outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S. But, 45 years after the legislation Blacks nor their vote have attained “Black Power”.

Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters are icons in Black American politics. The buzz among Blacks should be about how each of their character is being called into question by a House Ethics Committee. With accusations each used their office for personal gain; the public should use the upcoming hearings to gauge the truth about Mr. Rangel and Ms. Waters What House rule did either bend or brake for personal gain?

THE past 40 years were the best times ever to be Black in America. But, is it still? While the size of Black underclass has tripled since the 1980s, a Black middle-class that was thought to be flourishing may have fallen on hard times. Studies show: “the wealth gap between White and Black American families has more than quadrupled over the last generation”.

WHILE government officials and executives at BP have looked to affix blame for delays in reacting to one of the worst man-made environmental accidents in the country’s history, I and others, who were born in Louisiana and still call it home, ache.

“ALL politics is local,” Tip O’Neill once famously said. Sometimes, it also works the other way around: local politics becomes national, at least in its implications. That’s how it is this year in northeast Florida.

NO one answered to “Daddy” in the house where I grew up as a young black girl in Jacksonville, Florida. But I had plenty of fathers. Although my Dad died in a plane crash while I was still in diapers, some male relative always hovered around while Mom worked two jobs to feed my three brothers and me. An uncle, cousin or grandfather was always there to make me take my cod liver oil, pull up my socks, braid my hair and eat the eggs and grits he cooked before dropping me off at school on his way to a low-paying job in the post office or sweeping a warehouse floor.

WERE he alive today, a number of people would be throwing shoes at Dr. Ralph H. Bunche. Most African Americans know little of the role Dr. Bunche played in today’s Mille-East debacles. Ralph Bunche, not Barack Obama, was the first African American awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. But, among African Americans that know of Bunche many are critics saying he was “a useful idiot” that enabled Western Powers’ plans to establish the State of Israel.

Should South Africa be spending over $6 billion on the FIFA World Cup 2010 while many of its population survive on $120 a month?

WHO do you think you are? Are you a post-racial advocate that feels race is no longer significant or important in American society? How did you answer the US 2010 Census Form Question No. 9: “What is Person 1’s race?” The race question’s choices are: “White; Black, African-American, or Negro; American Indian or Alaska Native.”

Maybe a better question in how African Americans/Blacks/Negroes identify is consideration of: “Just how White is we”?