Stories by Salim Muwakkil

Barack Obama navigates a world where color still matters.

Political masterminds have transformed the candidate from a political visionary into an electoral product like every other presidential aspirant.

Hurricane Katrina has blown away the idea that race has ceased to matter in the United States.

Race has faded into the background as an issue for most Americans, including progressives.

From manslaughter convictions to boxing promotions, spiky-haired Don King has always been a hustler. His latest hustle: Republican pitchman.

Law enforcement conflates rap stars with gang members merely because most of them are young black men.

Media activists' preoccupation with corporate ownership does not address the racism that permeates the news.

Civil rights groups are still searching for a common thread to unite progressives in a struggle for racial justice.

Once-mighty notions of racial taxonomy fall hard in the three-part PBS series, "Race: The Power of an Illusion."

Beset by a growing chorus of critics who charge that its glorification of the "Thug Life" promotes misogyny, violence and crime, hip hop's advocates are on the defensive.

A recent study authored by the Justice Policy Institute reveals how misguided drug policies cause havoc in black communities

President Bush downplays the religious aspects of the Sept. 11 attacks, but Christian fundamentalists and neoconservatives have seized upon 9/11 to fire a fusillade of invective at the religion of Islam.

Despite the fact that racial minorities are disproportionately victimized by pollution, few traditionally have been involved in the organized struggle against environmental degradation. Black activists explain that they have ignored the ecology movement for so long because it excluded them. Recently, however, the interests of environmentalists and civil rights advocates have converged in struggles that fall under the rubric "environmental justice."

Where is the color in the new activism? Why haven't the connections between issues -- globalization, sweatshops and the environment on one hand, racial profiling, police brutality and prisons on the other -- been made?