(Akiit.com) One hundred one years ago, Booker T. Washington penned a letter to the editors of America’s leading black newspapers. In it, he contended that health, more than any other measure, was the single most important aspect to achieving progress and parity for African-Americans. In April, we remember Washington’s call ...
(Akiit.com) If it’s presidential-primary time it’s a given a significant part of the political discourse will involve dissing Black voters. Sometimes this gambit takes the form of citing Blacks’ reliable massive support for the Democratic Party as proof they don’t “understand” the issues at stake and who their real political ...
(Akiit.com) Bernie Sanders on Sunday tried to attribute most of his losses to Hillary Clinton – his recent string of victories notwithstanding – to poor people not voting. “Poor people don’t vote,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “I mean, that’s just a fact. That’s a sad reality of ...
(Akiit.com) This design, originally proposed by Bard College student Coriana Johnson, depicts colorblindness as a form of whitewashing. In rejecting the connection between race, culture, and identity, the default color becomes white. Many of us, as young adolescents, have been given tremendous context as to what is considered beautiful and ...
(Akiit.com) I absolutely understand why you didn’t get the new Beyoncé album. *Newsflash, honey* it wasn’t made for you… and I’m going to need you to be cool with that. Now, I found quite a few of the comments in your piece to be highly “inflammatory and agitating.” As a ...
(Akiit.com) Last month, I celebrated the beginning of my 81st year of life. For nearly half that time, I have been writing a nationally syndicated column on many topics generating reader responses that go from supportive to quite ugly. So I thought a column making my vision, values and views ...
(Akiit.com) Every day I wear a pair of medallions around my neck with portraits of two of my role models: Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. As a child I read books about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. She and indomitable and eloquent slave woman Sojourner Truth represent countless thousands ...
(Akiit.com) Change (verb): To make the form…of something different from what it is or from what it would be if left alone: …to change the course of history. (Dictionary.com) I accept as completely valid that all things will inevitably change – and that change isn’t necessarily bad. Accordingly, I’m pleased ...
(Akiit.com) When I first heard that Prince Rogers Nelson had died, it felt like music died. Again. I have been in an extended season of mourning since the March 22nd death of Malik Izaak Taylor, better known as Phife Dawg, one-fourth of the legendary hip hop group A Tribe Called ...
(Akiit.com) Let’s look at the political angst over trade deficits. A trade deficit is when people in one country buy more from another country than the other country’s people buy from them. There cannot be a trade deficit in a true economic sense. Let’s examine this. I buy more from ...
(Akiit.com) Today’s world revolves around the innovation and advances made in the technology and telecommunications industries. Yet, these industries continue to lag far behind when it comes to the participation and inclusion of people of color, and women, in all spheres. Silicon Valley — from the C-suite to the firms ...
(Akiit.com) In my experience, good public policy is best shaped by the dispassionate analysis of what in practice has worked, or not. Policy based on common assumptions and popular sentiments can become a recipe for mistaken prescriptions and misguided interventions. Nowhere is this divorce between rhetoric and reality more evident ...