Racial Issues

LAPD Command is Majority White Even as The Department Has Diversified

Turns out the LAPD is not only "majority minority," but it's also dominated by Latino officers. That's according to the latest data about the department's sworn personnel, which was circulated this week by the Latin American Law Enforcement Association, a.k.a. LA LEY:

Breaking: White People Tend to Live Closer to The Beach

No big surprise here. As we bid adieu to our May heat wave, new research has "discovered" that minorities tend to live in hotter communities throughout the nation. Why is this no big surprise to us?

Herb Wesson's Fiscal Commission Stacked With Wendy Greuel Supporters

L.A. Council President Herb Wesson today officially unveiled a new "L.A. 2020" Commission tasked with wading through L.A.'s finances and developing some recommendations to keep the city out of bankruptcy court.Though the commission's chair, Mickey Kantor, has said repeatedly that the commission will ... More >>

Wayne K. Guillary, LAPD Sgt., Appeals To Dorner, Says Cop Racism Remains

Another African American cop, this one still on the force, has reached out to disgraced ex-LAPD Officer Christopher Dorner, telling him to call a TV station before he surrenders so that the event is filmed and he is "not harmed." Sgt. Wayne K. Guillary posted a "personal appeal" on the website of L ... More >>

Christopher Dorner's Rampage Prompts Question On LAPD Discrimination At Mayoral Debate

Christopher Dorner's rampage intruded into the race for L.A. mayor this afternoon, when the candidates were asked at a forum whether they would investigate Dorner's claims of racial discrimination at the LAPD.Speaking in front of a mostly African-American audience at Crenshaw High School, ... More >>

Which White Entertainers Have a "Hood Pass" to Say the N-Word?

The late aughts saw a debate in the hip-hop community about the use of the n-word, sparked in part by Nas' plan to name his 2008 album Nigger (he ended up calling it Untitled), as well as Russell Simmons' call for industry self-censorship of the word. In 2007 the city of Detroit even hosted a "symbo ... More >>

University of California Urges U.S. Supreme Court to Uphold Affirmative Action

Just call us the Bleeding Heart State: Yesterday, leading up to a U.S. Supreme Court decision in Texas that will determine once and for all the constitutionality of considering race in university admissions, California Attorney General Kamala Harris joined the nation's most prestigious public unive ... More >>

America's War on Mexicans — Embodied in Arizona's S.B. 1070 — Has Gone Too Far

L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema

UCLA's comprehensive retrospective of alternative African-American filmmaking is the crown cinematic jewel of Pacific Standard Time

Porters of Hellgate's The Merchant of Venice

Obama Welcomed to SoCal This Week With Racist Email From O.C. Republican Marilyn Davenport

A racist vision of our president, straight out of the O.C.​Updated after the jump: Davenport gives an exclusive interview to OC Weekly; plus, she reportedly receives death threats. President Obama is coming to Southern California this week. How did some of us welcome him? By depicting him as ... More >>

Congressman Peter Kings' Congressional Hearings on Muslim Radicals Kickstarts Racial Profiling Debate

Congressman Peter King​New York congressman Peter King, who once claimed that more than 80 percent of Mosques in the United States are controlled by fundamentalists, "an enemy living amongst us," is catching a lot of heat as he gets ready to conduct congressional hearings later this week on radica ... More >>

Hey, L.A: Do You Have The Right To Be An Anti-Semite?

Hall of famer Mel Gibson.​After we recently published some of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's "Top 10 Anti-Semitic Slurs of 2010," readers weighed in -- some with disdain for those who couldn't contain their prejudice and others who questioned whether being anti-semitic was really a sin on the l ... More >>

FAIRY-y Tales

Abdul Jabbar Gbajiamilla Says Abercrombie Fired Him Over His Corn Rows; Federal Discrimination Suit Heading To Court

Plaintiff Gbajiamilla.​If Hitler were alive today we're sure he'd prefer the master-race aesthetic of Abercrombie & Fitch. After all, this the company with models so pure as the driven snow (and, er, androgynous) that Mad TV dedicated an ongoing sketch to them, with an employment policy that a ... More >>

Free Download: What do YOU think of Das Racist's New Mixtape?

Genius or the opposite? Das Racist​Everybody on the indie blogosphere, particularly those sections of the indie blogosphere devoted to buzzband hip hop that white indie kids like, are all up abuzz buzzbanding about the recently dropped FREE new mixtape by the curiously named collective Das Rac ... More >>

Uncle Remus Redux

Why Disney should revive Song of the South and bury The Princess and the Frog

For Colored Girls: The Sapphire Interview

Obama 'Joker' Poster: It's All About Race

Ted Soqui​Was it something I said?Early last week I posted a brief blog noting the appearance of those "Obama Socialism" posters, in which the president's face is made up to resemble Heath Ledger's Joker character from The Dark Knight. That Batman-film derived image had been Photoshopped by Firas ... More >>

Obama: Everyman's President?

On "Black Is the New White" by David Ehrenstein

The Deja Vu of Bernard Parks vs. Mark Ridley-Thomas

Stubborn black leaders stage a replay of '92, as the black community fades

And Her Hair Went With Her

Will Latinos Be the Swing Vote in the Tussle Between Parks and Ridley-Thomas?

Obama: Ain't No Such Thing as Superman

The audacity yet to come

UCLA's Black Shadow

Lessons From the Ruins

Time to look within the community for solutions to our problems

Welcome to Inglewood — Leave Your Aspirations Behind

For Erin Aubry Kaplan, coming home has been a labor of tough love

Not-News Week

Reclaiming the “N Word”

P.C. police bar a discussion on race

I’m Black and Paranoid

An L.A. native’s view of Crash

The Defense Rests – Not in Peace

The legacy of Johnnie Cochran as a rich, famous, undeniably effective and occasionally self-serving black professional will live on

Live Short and Prosper

Bush’s devious Social Security pitch to blacks

Gun Shy

The latest police shooting of a young black male is heard, but not felt, around the city and in the mayor’s race

Rice and the New Black Paradigm

When it comes to black history, Condi makes cynics of us all

The Black Avenger

Milton Crawford exposes the DWP’s big whitewash... racism, intimidation and harassment

People vs. the Police — Take Five

The Stanley Miller beating prompts more promises of citizen involvement. Haven’t we been here before?

Springtime for Democrats

And a revolution in South-Central

Affirming Truth

But the court in the very near future could see things differently

Mayberry, RFD

Break Dance

Secession may no longer be a dirty word for black people

A Fail to the Chief

Verdict in on Parks, but the jury's out on police reform

Peace of Me

The King of Compton

Mayor Omar Bradley and his reign of chaos

This Is the End

American History 101

On The Eve of Super Tuesday

The presidential hopefuls – and hopeless – do L.A.

Do U Know Us?

Armand Van Helden, Mos Def: A masculine equation

One District, Under Genethia

The descent of L.A. school-board president Genethia Hayes from mediator to tyrant

Outbreak of Accountability

Shockley takes the pledge

Letters