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CHARLOTTE, NC — North Carolina lawmakers are redrawing the state’s Congressional district maps, after judges called the old ones unconstitutional.
They have two weeks to get it done.
A panel of Federal Judges ruled Republicans’ created an unfair advantage when they used race and other partisan factors to create the current maps.
Our political contributor Mary C. Curtis stopped by Rising to offer some perspective.
(CNN) When the Trump administration recently signaled that it was going to crack down on affirmative action, some critics responded with an odd request: Why not start with the man sitting in the Oval Office? President Donald Trump embodies the worst stereotypes conservatives have invoked to describe affirmative action beneficiaries, according to several commentators, political scientists and diversity experts. They say he’s entitled, unqualified and held to lower standards because of racial grievances. They call Trump the nation’s first affirmative action president.
It’s kind of a pattern. In tangled tales of the intersection of racism and sexism, women of color are depended upon for the hard work but pushed aside for recognition.
CHARLOTTE, NC — Will 2018 beat 2017 when it comes to political surprises? WCCB Political Contributor Mary C. Curtis takes a look at what’s in store in Charlotte and beyond.
A place of worship has never been completely clear of politics in America. But that physical and spiritual space for contemplation and reflection may grow smaller still, and moments without intrusion from the bitterness and division in the world could grow shorter.
Tucked into the House version of the tax plan that Republicans dearly crave as “a win” is a provision that would remove a check on places of worship — churches, synagogues and mosques — and some nonprofits. The in-danger Johnson Amendment of 1954, one with more intent than teeth, supposedly prohibits pastors and other faith leaders from endorsing or opposing political candidates from their perches of religious authority or risk losing their tax-exempt status.
On a special edition of our local news roundup, On Point’s Tom Ashbrook joins Mike Collins from the stage of the Duke Energy Theater at Spirit Square in Charlotte to talk about the thrust of his show and share the spotlight with our round table of reporters.
After decisive primary, it’s still a battleground, and the state likes it that way.
CHARLOTTE, NC — Primaries and caucuses in the 2016 presidential election are just months away, and the Democratic and Republican races are as unclear as ever. Joe Biden still hasn’t said whether he’s running. And is Donald Trump the real thing? WCCB Political Contributor, Mary C. Curtis, weighs in on the race for the White House.
In 1947, when Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball, the world was not integrated. The movie “42” would have to last a lot longer than a couple of hours to tell the whole story: the death threats, the insults from fans, opposing players and his Dodgers teammates, Robinson’s separate and unequal trials, the pressure to perform in the face of it all. He was jeered, then cheered by thousands and faced it alone.
There wasn’t a closet big enough for him to take refuge in.
This week Jason Collins, a National Basketball Association center, became, as he writes in his Sports Illustrated cover story, “the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport.” Is he the Jackie Robinson of 2013? No.
Is he unbelievably brave in his own way? You bet.
In the glow of Inauguration Day spectacle, anyone reading reports might think the news flash of the day – after the second inauguration of America’s first African American president, of course – was Beyonce’s lip-synch-gate. Did the beautiful performer have some help in her rendition of the national anthem? And, by the way, did you notice First Lady Michelle Obama’s bangs?
It did surprise me that more was not made of another figure sharing the stage and holding her own with the president, someone’s whose history is also entwined in the red, white and blue flags fluttering throughout the crowd on the mall on that clear Washington day. You could say that without the efforts of a Myrlie Evers-Williams and all she represents, a President Barack Obama would not have been possible in 2008 and beyond.
