Commentary

We have a crisis in our country when a white police officer who is sworn to protect and serve his community is charged with boldly preying on eight black women by pulling them over for routine traffic stops, raping and sodomizing them, threatening them with jail or physical harm if they tell, and then return to […]

ST. LOUIS — It took a village to bury Michael Brown. It took more than the 600 members of Brown’s family who gathered inside the jam-packed Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church. It took more than the 2,500 black folks who filled the sanctuary. It took more than the hundreds of mourners who stood outside the […]

For U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, America’s top lawyer, father, and self-described social activist, uplifting the nation’s Black boys and young men of color is not just a priority, it’s a principled mission. Sitting at a long desk in a cavernous conference room inside the U.S Department of Justice, Holder, the nation’s first Black U.S. […]

President Barack Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder – who are among the most powerful men in America – have become selectively involved in the case of a black teenager, Michael Brown, whose shooting death by a white police officer has become a poignant national symbol for racial justice. When Holder landed in Ferguson, […]

Dear President Obama: I’m not a journalist who really believes in these open letters.  I think they’re pretty cheesy. But since I can’t exactly call you and tell you how I feel, I had to use this forum instead. Mr. President, I’m asking you to come home. I saw photos of you on Martha’s Vineyard […]

Life has a way of helping us keep things in perspective.  If we aren’t cynical and listen to its lessons, hopefully we can learn and grow. For months, a high school friend was preparing for me to come back to St. Louis, not far from my hometown, for a book signing party. You can imagine how […]

I cringed while watching looters on national television smash store windows, stuff pillow cases with stolen goods, and run unrepentant into the Missouri night. For the second straight evening, police in riot gear barricaded streets and fired rubber bullets and tear gas into an angry crowd of protestors to break up the chaos that has […]

I’m trying to understand why Michael Brown is lying dead from a police officer’s bullet instead of packing his bags and heading to college. Brown, 18, was killed last Saturday in what could be called the war against young Black men – the escalating confrontations between police and African American males, a fierce war that […]

Have you ever wondered why some people strive to do great things, others settle for the best thing that comes along, and still others have no ambition at all? If you think of it logically, you’ll probably conclude that it mostly has to do with your upbringing.  If people close to you do big things […]

When will New York City police realize that chokeholds are outlawed and stop using the deadly tactic on unsuspecting black citizens? Days after Eric Garner, a Black father, died when New York cops put him in a tragic chokehold, New York police used the lethal method on a pregnant Black woman in a dispute over […]

Yesterday, our columnist Tonya Pendleton penned her version of the Stephen A. Smith/Ray Rice Controversy. Today, Michael Cottman provides the male point of view.  Sports commentator Stephen A. Smith has been roundly criticized for his comments about domestic violence in the case of Ray Rice, the stocky Baltimore Ravens running back who punched his fiancée […]

It’s no secret that ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith has foot-in-mouth disease. It’s the reason why ESPN hired him – they wanted a loudmouth who could push the envelope when need be – a kind of Wendy Williams of sports who could generate ratings through provocation. There’s someone like him in every media outlet these days […]