April 2009
April 29th, 2009
Written by Diane Reynolds in Feature Stories with 0 Comments
A thick red Oriental rug lies on the living floor of Ernestine Slaughter’s row house on the corner of St. Mary’s and Tessier streets in Baltimore. Carved elephants and figurines from Africa line the windowsills. Eighty-two year old Slaughter, a retired high school teacher, answers the door wearing an apron printed with images of children in greens, reds and purples. Some of the children have...
April 29th, 2009
Written by Aricka Flowers in Stereotypes & Labels with 0 Comments
Articulate. On its own, the word means nothing more than its Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of "divided into syllables," or "words meaningfully arranged" or "able to speak." But when the word is used to describe a black person, it tends to carry an entirely different connotation.
"First of all, it expresses a presumption that African-Americans are, by and large, not articulate," explains...
April 28th, 2009
Written by Mary Castillo in Feature Stories with 0 Comments
When Janice Kwan planned her wedding, she was no different from any bride in that she wanted her dream to come true.“Growing up, I remember looking at my parents’ wedding banquet pictures and thinking how beautiful my mom looked in her red silk dress,” Kwan says, who with her husband, Adrian, is first-generation Chinese American. “But I had also always envisioned myself wearing the traditional...
April 28th, 2009
Written by Kevin C Morris in Our Daily Walk with 0 Comments
Incendiary Words
Words have such power - negative and positive - especially in our instant, interactive, interconnected digital society, where words can travel like wildfire all over the world in an instant. Imus, who uttered "nappy headed ho's" knows. Jesse "Hymietown" Jackson knows, too. As do many others who have stumbled into the thicket of incendiary words, many of course without malice,...
April 28th, 2009
Written by Daryl Williams in Eyes On The Enterprise with 0 Comments
Although the number of minority-owned businesses has grown significantly during the past 20 years, these firms continue to lag behind in economic indicators. Minority-owned firms represent only 2.7 percent of total U.S. gross receipts from all firms, only 4.3 percent of all national employment, only nine percent of U.S. firms with revenues of more than $500,000, and only five percent of U.S....