Dear Friends, May is over and so too is the school year. One of my favorite aspects of being a professor is that our lives, even as adults, are ruled by the rhythm of the academic calendar. As we move into the summer months I am beginning to think of filling my slower summer days with starting new projects, finishing long-deferred reading and taking some time to spend with family and friends. I have bid my final farewell to Princeton University and the wonderful students I taught there. I look forward to beginning new adventures at Tulane University. Of course politics never takes a break. Domestic and international political issues continue to stir -- and some to fester -- as we face the initial ramp up to the 2012 election. It remains my privilege to engage this fast paced policy world through television, radio and public writing. In fact, this month I began a new regular segment on MSNBC’s 11AM Thomas Roberts Shows. The segment is called “Sound Off” and features short discussions with Thomas and me discussing how current political issues impact local communities. Speaking of local communities, so many of our neighbors in Alabama, Missouri, and all along the Mississippi river are living in the aftermath of extraordinary damage and loss due to tornados and flooding. Please consider a charitable donation to an organization in your community to reach out to those communities with the greatest need. Best, Melissa

Political Writings

Cornel West v. Barack Obama The Nation May 17, 2011 Professor Cornel West is President Obama’s silenced, disregarded, disrespected moral conscience, according to Chris Hedges’s recent Truthdig column, “The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West went Ballistic.” In a self-aggrandizing, victimology sermon deceptively wrapped in the discourse of prophetic witness, Professor West offers thin criticism of President Obama and stunning insight into the delicate ego of the self-appointed black leadership class that has been largely supplanted in recent years. Read the Full Article

Breaking News: Not All Black Intellectuals Think Alike The Nation June 13, 2011 Edition Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man opens with a battle royal. The novel’s nameless black male protagonist is asked to recite his high school commencement speech touting submission and racial humility for the white citizens of his segregated town. When he arrives at the venue, he finds that the white men have arranged for him and other young black men to don boxing gloves and blindfolds and viciously fight one another for the entertainment of the white hosts. They even require the boys to scramble on an electrified mat for gold coins—which later turn out to be brass. Bruised and bloodied, the narrator is then required to deliver his speech to the men, who mockingly ignore his elocution. At the end of the night the same men award him a scholarship to the state college for Negroes. Read the Full Article

For Birthers, Obama Not Black Enough The Nation May 16, 2011 Edition Remember when the media regularly asked if Barack Obama was “black enough” to get the support of African-Americans? In 2007 pundits wondered if a black-identified but technically biracial candidate who came of age in the post–civil rights era, was raised far from traditional African-American communities, was educated in the Ivy League and boasted a foreign name might be more palatable to white voters than black ones. Today this query seems hopelessly naïve and endearingly optimistic about the fluidity of American racial identities. Read the Full Article

A Mother's Day Reflection

On My Mom, Diana Gray No Country for Young Women May 8, 2011 My mother is the fourth of five children born into a working class family at the end of WWII. She is descended from Mormon pioneers who pushed handcarts across the American west. A white woman in a Mormon family, my mom was raised in the racially homogenous enclave of Spokane, Washington and in 1960 went off to college at Brigham Young University. People are typically incredulous when I share this part of my mother’s biography. After all, if they know me as an outspoken, progressive, feminist, black woman, it might be hard to believe that I am the daughter of someone with these beginnings. Read the Full Article

Recent Media Appearances

Mitch Daniels and Women’s Reproductive Health The Rachel Maddow Show May 17, 2011

Discussing the Cornel West Criticism of President Obama Ed Schultz Show May 19, 2011

Oklahoma's Affirmative Action Fight The Last Word April 28, 2011

How Mississippi Floods Highlight America’s Inequality The Thomas Roberts Show May 10, 2011

Spillway Opened to Save Baton Rouge, New Orleans The Thomas Roberts Show May 19, 2011