Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from May, 2008

Mixed-Up on Gay Marriage (by Casey Lartigue, in The Root)

Black people, better than most, should understand the importance of being able to choose who to love and who to marry. By: Casey Lartigue | Posted: May 29, 2008 at 12:00 AM Published by The Root  "As to mixed marriages, the most delicate question of all, it is to be noted that 29 states - all those of the South and many in the Southwest - forbid it. In the North, such marriages are frowned upon, and represent an almost insignificant percent." --The American Negroes, special bulletin published by the U.S. Information Agency, an adjunct of the State Department, 1957   So, you wanna get married? After years of playing (or getting played by) the field, you've found that special someone you consider irreplaceable. You agree to be together happily ever after, or for as long as you can stand each other. You tell family, friends, perhaps even former significan

Roundtable: Sean Bell Protests & Presidential Politics

Listen Now [17 min 46 sec] add to playlist News & Notes , May 7, 2008 · On today's bloggers roundtable, Farai Chideya moderates a conversation about the latest string of protests over the shooting death of Sean Bell, last night's Democratic primary results, and the death of interracial marriage pioneer, Mildred Loving. Joining in the conversation are bloggers Carmen Van Kerckhove of Racialicious ; Baratunde Thurston of Jack & Jill Politics ; and Casey Lartigue of The Casey Lartigue Show!

The Root

I've got a piece on The Root this morning. Empty Threats: A History Still taking the black vote for granted after all these years. TheRoot.com Updated: 5:33 PM ET May 9, 2008 May 12, 2008 --If Sen. Clinton somehow manages to wrest the nomination from Sen. Barack Obama, black voters, we are being told , are likely to sit at home or vote Republican . But haven't we heard these types of threats before? Black Democrats have been warning for decades that their party will be in trouble if they keep taking the black vote for granted in the general election. Still others have warned that Republicans could steal a large number of black votes as a result. Based on recent history, Black Democrats will huff and puff, then... stand in line to vote for the Democrat presidential candidate, hustle around the country and exhort blacks to vote. Let's take a trip down memory lane: ELECTION, 1976

Chaos continues at Radio One

The only national black talk network has been having a lot of trouble. Of course, I point to the day they pulled my show off the air as the beginning of the end. 1) According to the Washington Post : Radio One's stock lost 17 percent of its value this week, closing yesterday at $1.06. Since last year, when the company's stock traded at a [sic: high] of $7.59, its value has declined 85 percent. 2) The son of the founder of the company has just received a generous pay raise and compensation package. According to the Washington Post : Liggins would receive $980,000 in salary, a 70 percent increase over the $575,370 he made in 2007, and have the opportunity to match that in an annual bonus, contingent in part on the company meeting certain performance goals. He would be paid a $1 million "signing bonus" because, the Radio One compensation committee said, he has been underpaid for the last three years. Liggins also would be paid $4.8 million to compensate him for losses

AIDS and the government

Rev. Jeremiah Wright has attracted a lot of attention with his theories about the federal government creating AIDS in a laboratory. Here's an excerpt excerpt from Talk Radio Can't Handle the Truth By Casey Lartigue Jr. and Eliot Morgan Sunday, August 5, 2007; Page B03 Often, just one word can silence those who doubt the conspiracy theory of the day: COINTELPRO, the FBI 's notorious anticommunist program that was used against groups such as the Southern Christian Leadership Council and the Ku Klux Klan . From the Scottsboro Boys to the Tuskegee syphilis study, our government has displayed a willingness to conspire against its citizens. Likewise, truth-squadding becomes difficult when such theories are linked to hard data: Black Americans constitute about 12 percent of the U.S. population but about half of the nation's AIDS cases. That sets up the conditions in which, according to researchers Sheryl Thorburn Bird and Laura M. Bogart, more than 20 percent of black Americ