Former USDA official Shirley Sherrod claims she was abruptly fired by the Obama administration because the White House feared Glenn Beck would target her in a segment on his show. (Which he did anyway, of course.) Ben Jealous, NAACP president, claims that he was “snookered” by “the right” into misrepresenting, exploiting and demonizing Sherrod. The way the Obama administration and the NAACP bungled the case of Shirley Sherrod should disturb and alarm everyone concerned with fairness, courage and racial honesty.

Denied due process, Shirley Sherrod was misrepresented, exploited, demonized …

I know there’s a need for the NAACP, but I have not always been sure that the organization itself understands where it is needed in the times since the white-hot days of the 60’s and 70’s. Like many of my contemporaries, I have been frustrated with the NAACP’s slowness to embrace and utilize digital technology to get important work done. Further, I’ve sometimes perceived lack of a unifying focus. I let my membership lapse.
But my friend Kevin Myles, president of NAACP Kansas, has been steadfast in his commitment to the …

While some people are overly invested in the trial of former BART transit cop Johannes Mehserle who was convicted Thursday of involuntary manslaughter for shooting Oscar Grant, life will go on. It seems much of the outrage stems from those who have focused primarily on the race of the cop in question, making Oscar Grant the poster child for racism conspiracy theories.
What most do not realize is there is little “new” about cases such as these. While historically there has been an established pattern of aggression where innocent men were …

A reader, Charlton McIlwain wrote in to ask me to let y’all know about a survey he’s conducting.
Mcllwain says, “I am a professor of media, culture & communication at New York University and co-director of the Project on Race in Political Communication (RaceProject.org).
I am interested in the ways that children and parents talk about issues of race, ethnicity, racism, etc. and am conducting a survey primarily geared to collecting funny, interesting, alarming, or challenging anecdotes that parents have about a time when their child, themselves or other children they …

Please check out my response to Erica Jong’s racially insulting she wrote for The Huffington Post.
My answer is posted over at Aol. Here’s an excerpt:
Some people are blinded by their own racial arrogance. They are so convinced that their perspective is relevant on what life is like for people of color, that they regurgitate hackneyed perspectives on race as if they are revelations. Writer Erica Jong, famous for books including”Fear of Flying,” published a column in The Huffington Post that stands as exhibit A of this kind of annoyance.
Jong …