contributors - Melissa Harris-Perry

about Melissa Harris-Perry

From MLK to Obama: How we define black leadership

By Melissa Harris-Perry

1:46 AM on 01/17/2011

OPINION - Leaders do not always win, but leaders always call us to believe that we are capable of making something better than what we currently believe is possible...
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NAACP takes on Tea Party's 'racist element'

By Melissa Harris-Perry

3:05 PM on 07/13/2010

OPINION - The willingness of some tea party protesters to use racism and the unwillingness of many to denounce them ushers in a new culture of accepting racial bias...
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Militia movements pose a danger to democracy

By Melissa Harris-Perry

12:03 PM on 04/14/2010

OPINION - I am deeply distressed when a group of organized, active-duty personnel seem to suggest that a coup is a legitimate way to express their grievance...
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Steele distracts from real GOP drama

By Melissa Harris-Perry

7:59 PM on 04/05/2010

OPINION - Michael Steele's response that his race narrowed his space for committing political and ethical errors is a disingenuous use of "the race card."...
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Tea Party channels the Confederacy with reactionary rhetoric

By Melissa Harris-Perry

6:42 PM on 03/29/2010

OPINION - After all, President Barack Obama is no monarch sitting on a throne and taxing hapless colonists...
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GOP can't turn a blind eye to bigots in their midst

By Melissa Harris-Perry

7:48 PM on 03/25/2010

OPINION - Republicans cannot simply pretend that the vitriol being expressed in communities across the country is unrelated to their actions on Capitol Hill...
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Are conservatives inciting racial violence with heated rhetoric?

By Melissa Harris-Perry

2:39 PM on 03/24/2010

VIDEO - The same sort of secessionist language we're hearing from the far right is eerily similar to the rhetoric that led to the Civil War...
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Black American culture exported to Africa

By Melissa Harris-Perry

11:14 AM on 07/09/2009

In April I delivered the W.E.B. Du Bois lectures at Harvard University. In this series of lectures I took up issues surrounding African American citizenship in the contemporary United States. I tried to think about how the years between Hurricane Katrina and the election of Barack Obama have created new...
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Celebrating the full narrative of America

By Melissa Harris-Perry

9:56 AM on 07/03/2009

O, let America be America again-- The land that never has been yet-- And yet must be--the land where every man is free. -- Langston Hughes As a child I was never conflicted about July 4th. Independence Day celebrations were a marker of freedom from school, an opportunity for grilling...
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Preserving the arts may save our kids

By Melissa Harris-Perry

7:43 AM on 06/17/2009

I spent last Friday night at a 4th grade poetry slam. I wasn't sure I wanted to go. As the mother of a first grader I know that sometimes parents and teachers simply have to smile widely and clap loudly so that our kids will feel supported even when their...
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Race getting the silent treatment in healthcare debate

By Melissa Harris-Perry

2:54 PM on 06/08/2009

"Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane." --- Martin Luther King, Jr. In June the Obama administration launched its national initiative for healthcare reform. With healthcare taking center stage on the domestic policy agenda Americans will soon be debating the relative merits...
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