(Akiit.com) Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama vowed to knock off their racial jawing and sniping at each other before their Las Vegas debate. And they should. Now they should start talking about racial profiling, affirmative action, housing and job discrimination, the racial disparities in prison sentencing, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, health care for the poor, failing inner city schools, and ending the racially-marred drug sentencing laws, and what they intend to do about them. They only pecked around the edges at these issues in Las Vegas.

And before that they’ve said relatively little about them on the campaign trail. In fact, the last time they took a mild stab at talking about racial issues was at their Howard University debate back in June. Their deafening silence since then on racial issues was disturbed only by Clinton and Obama’s swipe at each other over what Martin Luther King, Jr. did or didn’t do for civil rights and Oprah’s arm and arm jaunt with Obama through South Carolina.

While it’s satisfying to hear the candidates utter a few soundbites about racial problems in one debate it’s no guarantee that they’ll keep talking about them. Even John Edwards who started out his campaign with a bang when he toured the universal symbol of poverty and neglect, New Orleans’ Katrina wrecked 9th Ward, has gone virtually mute talking about race and poverty.

If the Democratic contenders don’t find their voice on these issues, and boom it out loudly and repeatedly, they will stumble badly with those that need and deserve to hear it the most, namely black and Latino voters. They have been the most loyal of Democratic shock troops. In every election stretching back to Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory in 1964, they have given the Democrats the overwhelming majority of their vote. Even when many white ethnics and trade unionists defected to the Republicans, blacks and Latinos stood pat with the Democrats. But in the last two presidential elections they haven’t got much from them for their staunch support.
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(Akiit.com) The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday we celebrate today, moved a nation to confront the legacy of slavery, the consequences of legalized segregation and the devastation of racial inequality - including educational inequality. His abiding legacy provides a challenging context for the recent debate over the proper role of historically black colleges and universities in American higher education.

Some argue that historically black colleges and universities are unnecessary and ineffective. After all, in the decades since Dr. King’s assassination, black Americans have gained greater access to colleges and universities. Moreover, black students at majority-white institutions appear to have better graduation rates than at some historically black colleges, and many people, including some black students, believe that historically black colleges are not academically rigorous.

Almost 40 years after Dr. King’s death, and with the serious challenges facing historically black colleges and universities today, some citizens and legislators may conclude that significant investment in supporting and improving historically black universities in Maryland and elsewhere is no longer appropriate.

Such a conclusion, however, would be mistaken. The value and mission of historically black colleges and universities should not be judged from the conditions that produced them, but rather from the crucial role they still play in reducing racial inequality and in meeting educational, business and leadership needs within and beyond Maryland.

Historically black colleges and universities provide opportunity for those who have been underserved by public education systems and by their communities, and a community where one can learn about and with those who exemplify the highest ideals of education. They perform this dual mission in a way that is simply not possible by relying on a combination of community colleges and traditional, majority-white institutions.
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(Akiit.com) As we all celebrate MLK, Jr. today, It warms my heart knowing we as a nation have come so far… Now truly loving thy fellow man/woman, as everyone seems to be living in harmony… The man would be proud to know his dream is alive and well… Still it reminds me that, one’s life can be taken away so easily, and many of us are not prepared just in case our time is up… WholeSale Insurance a online database that list life insurance rate and more… Info that will make your life easier can be found there, as I would recommend anyone to throughly compare all the life insurance companies that they lise… Free quotes also, as time shall not stand still for no one… In summary, do whats best so that your family can live confortable in case you were to die…

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(Akiit.com) McDonald’s Corp.’s connection with buns is getting the hamburger chain no love among some black female consumers.

The women are objecting to the Oak Brook-based company’s advertisements that appear alongside images of nearly naked women on an Internet site designed by Black Entertainment Television. The site was created to add a marketing dimension to advertisers’ appeal to people of color.

Activist blogger Gina McCauley takes McDonald’s and others to task for advertising on pages that feature explicit photos of black women in a community section of www.bet.com, part of the Viacom Inc.-owned BET Networks.

McCauley — named recently by Essence magazine as one of the 25 most influential African Americans of either gender — is marching under the banner “Why are McDonald’s, Nissan, the Army, and the Navy Whoring Out Our Daughters?” at her Web site, WhatAboutOurDaughters.blogspot.com.

“They’re running an ad for McDonald’s dollar menus next to these black women sporting G-strings, and they would not be running these ads on … men’s sites featuring white women,” McCauley said. She called on the companies to drop support of the site that allowed the scrolling images to be transferred to other Internet sites.

“Any company that is running an ad on that site is helping to fund the dissemination of those images,” she charged. “I know that if these were white women, McDonald’s would not be running ads on this page.”

BET — the Washington-based multimedia entertainment company — has been taking fire recently for excessive portrayals of negative stereotypes of African Americans and exploitive images of black women in particular. Last week, BET removed the page that also carried ads from Northfield-based Kraft Foods, Betty Crocker, Cheerios owner General Mills and tax-payer-funded military branches. The move was one that had been in the works and was unrelated to the blogger protests, a BET spokeswoman said. Similar photos are maintained on a different page that allows viewers to rate and post comments about the images of women — and men.
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(Akiit.com) Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama has all the characteristics necessary to make people feel comfortable voting for him: He is educated, articulate, handsome, charming, with a picture-perfect family. His closet for now appears to be relatively skeleton free, as long as you don’t count the admission of youthful drug experimentation, and these days, most people don’t. And oh, yes, he is also African-American, not just in the sense of politically correct terminology; Obama is, as they would say in my Irish family, ”first generation,” the son of a Kenyan father and an American mother who hailed from Kansas.

His candidacy has put race front-and-center in the country’s dialog while kicking up a cloud of dust that many thought had settled long ago. Over the past week, we’ve watched the Democratic Party, which relies heavily on a base of black voters, and Sen. Hillary Clinton, who has been the favorite of many black leaders, shoot themselves in their feet as they sparred over which one of them better understands the needs of the black community and who supposedly insulted Dr. Martin Luther King’s legacy. Watching black leaders divide into Hillary and Obama camps as they made the television talk show circuit was painful to see. Now it appears from the very polite discourse exhibited during the Jan. 15 Democratic debate that the rhetoric has been dialed back and a truce declared just in time to celebrate the life and teachings of Dr. King.

One wonders what he would think if he could walk among us today. Many of the hopes expressed in his famous ”I have a dream” speech have come to pass; ”With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together.” Today, black and white children attend the same schools, their parents work side by side; the black middle class is successful and growing.
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