There is a quiet disconnect between civil rights leaders' support for immigration reform and the unease that many blacks feel toward illegal immigration.

The nomination of Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court could put the issue of affirmative action back in the national spotlight. During Kagan's tenure as dean of Harvard University Law School, 23 of the 29 new hires were white men.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and the legislature legislature did something that civil rights leaders couldn’t do: they dumped profiling back on the nation’s table.

The 32 black Republicans running for House seats in the fall comprise a historic high. Though they say there are running to win, but they have some of the weightiest millstones around their political necks that any candidates could have.

Arizona officials claim they had to enact their controversial new law because the federal government has stalled on comprehensive immigration reform. This dumps the immigration reform issue squarely back in Obama’s lap. And it couldn’t come at a worse time for Obama.

Jackie Robinson is remembered for breaking the color barrier in 1947, a tipping point for race relations in America. The irony is that Robinson didn’t see baseball -- or America -- quite the way it is remembered today.

Daryl Gates, who died on Friday at 83, was depending on whom one talked to, the top cop who expanded and popularized the kick-butt, SWAT teams, or the top cop who devised and expanded innovative, programs such as DARE, which served as a national police model for drug prevention and education.

Obama has the chance of a president’s lifetime to follow his heart and pick the kind of Supreme Court justice who will protect the rights of the powerless, minorities and women.

Michael Steele, RNC Chairman, has bungled money and staff. He regularly mugs and grandstands on network talk shows, brags about being hip, a street guy. A handful of detractors is publicly calling for him to step down. That won't happen.

By checking the box “African-American” on his census form President Obama unequivocally and unhesitatingly made it official: He’s African-American.

Many supporters of President Obama had hoped for an FDR-like figure in the White House. They had been disappointed - until now. The last couple of weeks have shown that Obama, if he wants it, can get into an FDR mode.

Commentator Earl Ofari Hutchison argues racism may be unsavory, but the GOP cannot win an election without it.

Commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson argues the devil is in the details of the new health care reform law.

Yesterday, supporters of black minister Robert Taylor called for justice 10 days after he was wrongly stopped by police in a Los Angeles suburb with a history of complaints of racial profiling. NAM commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson, who was there, compares the incident to the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates.

Linda Carty is the rarest of rarities. She’s a British subject who once sang for the Prince of Wales. She’s a subject in a film documentary. She’s garnered massive international media, as well as legal and political attention and support. She worked as an informant for the Drug Enforcement Agency. She's also a death row.

Dismissing the tea party protesters as racist misses the point -- why they’ve roared on the scene seemingly from nowhere and caught the attention of the public.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson explains why President Obama won't pardon legendary boxer Jack Johnson.

Esther Gentile reports on a 2010 Census contest to raise awareness about the Hispanic community in the United States, Earl Ofari Hutchinson examines why President Obama won't pardon Jack Johnson, and Maaza Mengiste is the author of Beneath the Lion's Gaze, set during the Ethiopian Civil War.

Obama cringed in horror at the absurd notion that he is a Marxist. But tossing the damaging political label at him is more than just a calculated political ploy to smear and taint Obama. It taps into the deeply held belief that Obama can and will actually mug the rich.

President Obama never encouraged the media concocted, adman’s fantasy land, comparison of him to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But with the Massachusetts vote debacle smacking him in the face, his only hope for rebound is to really act like FDR

An extensive field poll on the Obama presidency yields surprising results, Taylor and Bessie Rogers of StoryCorps discuss seeing Martin Luther King in Memphis, and Betty Kamath is returning to a home for the elderly in India.