by Jessica Williams-Gibson

INDIANAPOLIS—On the upcoming 2010 Census, when choosing race Blacks will be able to identify themselves as Black, African-American…or Negro.

Conservative commentator Glenn Beck states “African-American is a bogus, PC, made-up term. I mean, that’s not a race. Your ancestry is from Africa and now you live in America. Ok, so you were brought over—either your family was brought over through the slave trade or you were born here and your family emigrated here or whatever but that is not a race.”

The Week of Feb. 5-11

February 5

THADDEUS STEVENS

1866—Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, one of the great White heroes of Black history, offers his famous amendment to the Freedman’s Bureau bill to use land confiscated from former slave owners as well as some public lands to guarantee each adult former slave “40 acres and a mule.” However, even after the Civil War there was enough anti-Black and pro-South sentiment in Congress to defeat the measure 126 to 37. If the Stevens measure had passed, it may have changed the entire course of Black history in America for the former slaves would have had a solid economic foundation upon which to build their new lives and the poverty that plagued African-Americans for the next 100 years could have been prevented.

by Julie Pace

WASHINGTON (AP)—President Barack Obama’s choice to lead the Transportation Security Administration withdrew his name Jan. 20, a setback for an administration still trying to explain how a man could attempt to blow up a commercial airliner on Christmas Day.

POLITICAL CASUALTY—Erroll Southers, the Obama administration’s choice to lead the Transportation Security Administration, issued a statement Jan. 20 announcing the withdrawal of his nomination.

Erroll Southers said he was pulling out because his nomination had become a lightning rod for those with a political agenda. Obama had tapped Southers, a top official with the Los Angeles Airport Police Department, to lead the TSA in September but his confirmation has been blocked by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who says he was worried that Southers would allow TSA employees to have collective bargaining rights.

CHARLOTTE (NNPA)—Flanked by dozens of Black newspaper publishers from across the country, National Newspaper Publishers Association Chairman Danny Bakewell is demanding that the U.S. Census Bureau allocate more funding in advertising for Black newspapers throughout America in order to conduct an accurate count in the 2010 U.S. Census.

The current allocation both disrespects the Black Press’s ability to influence African-Americans to respond to the census and woefully inadequate to properly inform Black communities about the importance of being counted, he said.

CALLING CENSUS TO TASK—NNPA publishers, led by Chairman Danny Bakewell, held a press conference during the organization’s winter conference to decry the piddly advertising dollars that the Census Bureau is spending with Black newspapers.