Portside

African-Americans are disproportionately likely to be poor, they are only a quarter of Americans living in poverty; whites make up about 41% of the poor. Those white Americans who don't want to help the poor because they'd be helping people of another race are actually screwing over white people big time.The wealth gap between /white and African-American families tripled between 1980 and 2009.

African-Americans are disproportionately likely to be poor, they are only a quarter of Americans living in poverty; whites make up about 41% of the poor. Those white Americans who don't want to help the poor because they'd be helping people of another race are actually screwing over white people big time. The wealth gap between /white and African-American families tripled between 1980 and 2009.

"...it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard." [March 14, 1968]

What will it take to reshape America’s police departments, and curtail the unprompted police killings that beset us still?

Herein lay the difference between my son's black childhood and my own. Not only was I assaulted by the n-word so much earlier in life - at age 7, while visiting relatives in Memphis - but I also had many other experiences that differentiated my life from the lives of my white childhood friends. There was no way that they would "forget" that I was different. The times, in fact, dictated that they should not forget; our situation would be unavoidably "racial."

How Chicago's school choice system is tracking kids into separate high schools based on achievement (and race).

The well-intended regulations don’t do enough to protect students who are easy prey for for-profit universities.