(NNPA)—Now that the mid-term elections are over and the politics of exaggeration appear to be catching less national attention, it is past time to focus on the economic condition and plight of 50 million African-Americans. The devastating economic disaster of the Bush years has a lingering negative economic effect on everyone in the United States, especially for Black Americans.

(NNPA)—In 1981 a good friend of mine and I drove from Boston to Detroit for a labor conference. At the tail end of the conference, I was asked if I could give a ride to a Scandinavian woman who was attending the conference. Apparently she wanted to get back to the East Coast. My friend (an African-American man) and I looked at each other and immediately declined to offer her a ride. Though I felt very guilty about it, what crossed my mind was the idea of two African-American men driving long distance with a very attractive, young, blond White woman in the same car, and the potential ramifications.

by Shannon Williams

Election Day was especially significant to me this year because it fell on my deceased mother’s birthday. Voting, particularly this year, was my way of honoring a woman who truly believed that one vote could make a difference. I remember once when I was younger, my mother taking me with her to vote. As I stood on my tip toes to see what she was doing, she quietly explained to me, “I’m voting for him because he believes in saving jobs,” she said of one candidate. “This lady gets my vote because she has been an advocate of the community for a long time,” my mother said of another candidate as she darkened the oval next to the person’s name.

(NNPA)—The election of President Barack Obama in 2008 seems to have uncorked a virulent racism among folks who are hatefully resentful of the fact that an African-American man now leads our nation. The steady drumbeat of negative commentary is so overwhelming that many African-Americans are cowed and cautioned into not even asserting our issues, so artfully poised to drown out dissent that some liberals have decided to hold their powder until after the election for fear of hurting our president.