Formerly the bedrock of our community, the black family is now failing. Around 70 percent of black children are currently being born out of wedlock, and the availability of marrying-age black males is restricted by a very high — albeit declining — incarceration rate.

As it is, Washington bureaucrats exert considerable control over the over 56 million Social Security recipients by controlling Social Security payments and subsequent cost of living adjustments (COLAs).

“Django Unchained,” a new movie from white director Quentin Tarantino, is making headlines for its violence and raw racial language. An action movie rooted in a raw portrayal of the slave era, its content is proving to be quite troublesome for many black Americans.

In 1992, now Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke — one of the key players in current efforts to reinvigorate the American economy — collaborated with fellow economics professors Andrew Abel and Dean Croushore to author Macroeconomics. The book looks at fiscal policy from a “big picture” perspective.

Nowhere has the homeownership decline been more acute than in the black community. In 2004, 49.1 percent of black households owned their own home. In 2011, that number fell sharply to 44.9 percent.

Obama enjoyed two years of a House and Senate controlled by the same political party as him, and they quickly appropriated nearly a trillion dollars in “stimulus” spending that was meant to help save and create jobs. Did it work? Did it work for his most loyal constituency?

It is often said that people truly cannot understand the United States of America until they have thoroughly traveled the nation....I’d like to challenge that reasoning somewhat — expanding it to argue that one really cannot understand our nation until they have obtained a passport and traveled outside its borders.

“Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” expresses the sentiments of a people born from slavery and having great fears of white America. That hardly represents black Americans today.

In tough economic times, such as those Americans are currently experiencing, there are some ways that black churches can perform services that could help parishioners weather financial crises more effectively.

Whatever happened to people such as Berry Gordy of Motown Records, John H. Johnson of Johnson Publishing or cardiac surgery pioneer Vivien Thomas? There are new names of note, such as movie special effects and digital music pioneer Marc Hannah and car designer Dennis Moses, but not legends like their predecessors.