by Elinor Tatum

If you look at any election in the past 50 years, you will notice one thing—that the Black vote counts. But when you look at the way politicians look at the Black vote, you may see a very different picture.

The Black community has power, and when we get passionate about an issue, we come out in full force. But when we are neglected, we may very well sit an election out.

(REAL TIMES MEDIA)—Imagine you have a roommate. You didn’t necessarily want a roommate, but you live a pretty expensive lifestyle, and you’d rather have a roommate than budget your money better to actually afford your place. You and your roommate have a decent relationship, occasionally you bump heads but essentially you need each other. Unfortunately there’s one big problem, your roommate is messy. Every couple of months he makes a huge mess in the kitchen and never gets around to washing the dishes. No matter how many times you tell him to clean up, no matter how much the kitchen smells, or how high the dishes pile he never gets around to cleaning up the kitchen. Morally everybody knows that you should just refuse to wash dishes until the problem gets so bad the roommate has to clean it up, but you just can’t wait that long. Whether he likes it or not President Barack Obama is going to have to “wash the dishes” with the BP gulf spill, unless Americans are willing to dump their oily “roommate.”

Father’s Day as some of are aware could be every day of the year. On a personal level the four of us were blessed with the most wonderful father a family could have. Our father was a neighbor father who demonstrated by example all of the qualities that were necessary in the development of a man. Daddy was more than an exceptional provider of materialism, he instilled in all that knew him the following positive factors:

Responsibility for self, family and others, never condoning wrong, can’t was never to be a part of your vocabulary or lifestyle, all things being equal you could accomplish anything, honor your parents, respect for all adults and especially women.

(NNPA)—Most news stories about a new study showing that 22 percent of Black male newlyweds and 9 percent of African-American females marry outside their race neglected to report another major finding: When Whites, Hispanics and Asians decide to marry outside their group, African-Americans rank last in their choice of mates.

A study by the Pew Research Center titled, “Marrying Out: One-in-Seven New U.S. Marriages is Interracial or Interethnic,” received widespread national attention. And many saw it as yet another confirmation that Black females are in a no-win predicament when it comes to marriage, especially marriage to another African-American.