Uncle Ben heads to the boardroom!!! The New York Times has a fascinating article about the reintroduction of the “racially charged advertising character” Uncle Ben.  
Read the New York Times Article –  Uncle Ben, Board Chairman
Check out the Uncle Ben Website — big fun!  - UncleBens.com
A couple seeks fertility treatment in an effort to conceive a child, nothing new about that. Samples get switched, and the child is born having no biological connection to the father. It’s troubling, but these things happen. In fact, the father is white, the mother Dominican, and the child is black.  …

 
Some cases illustrate the most devastating effects of racism in the American justice system. Take what happened in Tulia, Texas, for example. In July 1999, 46 people, 43 of them black, were arrested based on the completely uncorroborated word of  Tom Coleman, a white, inexperienced, undercover narcotics officer, temporarily employed by the local police department. Those 43 were 10% of Tulia’s black population. Several cases were dropped immediately after the accused proved their alibis with work timestamps or bank videotape. These contradictions to Coleman’s accusations raised no red flags with …

 
They may be the most dreaded six words in corporate America: “Your diversity training attendance is mandatory.” These edicts, issued by faceless HR (human resources) departments, mean you are forced to take much needed time away from your never ending workload to sit through some usually mundane, preachy and uncomfortable 3 to 6 hour combination of politically correct speeches, CRASH screenings, and goofy exercises. All of this intended to shift your assumption paradigm about people who are different from you in race, culture or gender. This premise for anyone older …

Every now and then, I get tired of dealing with race in America. Despite all I know, new incidents of bigotry unsettle me. In those moments, I wonder if we as a nation have reached some kind of racial glass ceiling, and this is as good as it gets with gaping canyons of misunderstanding and isolation between us.  Its just at this point something magical usually happens. What happened this weekend was young Nick Biggs
Nick is the 12 year old son of one of my best friends from Yale. His …

Contributor Nick Biggs is 12 years old, living in Boulder, Colorado. He’s a 6th grader. His mom, Gretchen, was a near professional tennis player and played 4 years on Yale’s varsity team. And I quote, “He comes from a very tennisy (sic) family and that’s why he’s such a huge tennis fan!” The Williams sisters are his heroes. They are also, at this point, single handedly upholding the reputation of the US in women’s tennis. Serena is the only American in the top 20 now, although the US has dominated the sport for …

People of all races are still discussing the whole ‘articulate black’ issue. I’ve had half a dozen conversations about it directly and my friends tell me they’re discussing it with their friends, too. Senator Joseph Biden’s comments, and the rush of media analysis that followed, touched a nerve about appropriate sensitivity vs. irrational political correctness. Here is Biden’s quote, as it appeared in the New York Observer on 2/5/07:
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, …

 
My favorite television show of all time, The Wire, featured a devastating scene last season. A former police captain took a few streetwise, underexposed and underprivileged kids to one of the best restaurants in Baltimore, the city where the series takes place. The kids, all black, won this dinner by participating in a class project. And although the former captain, also black, did everything he could to put them at ease, the kids collapsed in the unfamiliarity of the situation and became almost completely incapacitated. One of them would not …

Yesterday, I had my nails done. In between clipping, “You like short, right?” shaping, “I know, I know square round,” and painting, “This color’s so good for you. I don’t like that other color from last time, honey,” Annie** rolled out the story of how she came to this country from Vietnam in 1975. Annie told me how she later escaped from an almost unspeakably abusive husband and alone, knowing no English at first, raised three kids who have all graduated from college and now have good jobs and families …

I celebrate July 18th as my personal Independence Day. On that day in 2005, I cut off all of my chemically relaxed hair and began to wear a short cropped Afro. Leaving the salon that day, the sense of relief and freedom was exhilarating, and that free feeling lasts still. For the first time in decades, I have wash and wear hair, which means I have much more time for other things, and I’m free from worrying about third degree chemical burns or skin charring burns on my scalp, forehead …

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times published a highly offensive, overly simplistic piece about Barack Obama. Titled “Obama, the Magical Negro”, it makes no difference that the author, David Ehrenstein, is African American. Ehrenstein doesn’t get it. The term ‘magic Negro’ was coined in the 1950’s to describe a particular kind of black presence in film and literature.  The ‘magic Negro’, or what Spike Lee calls the ‘super duper magical Negro’, sometimes has special powers that serve to enlighten or make better their white counterparts. At the end of the story, …

A study by the State Education Agency has found that one-third  (36%) of Washington, DC residents are functionally illiterate, compared with a national rate of 21%. And the headline is the 36%? Click here to read it for yourself.

The Boston Globe is running a  two-part series on how the post 9/11 immigration crackdown impacts Boston’s Irish population and the complexion of Boston in general. Here’s a quote:
“The numbers aren’t large, and no one is saying the old double-standard was ever fair. But for the Irish, the message is loud — and startling.”The deportations were a slap across the face, a wake up call,” says Brian O’Donovan, the host of WGBH radio’s weekly “Celtic Sojourn” program. Culturally, O’Donovan said, the result is an immigrant community that is less confident, more wary, less …

 
You would think that the network news outlets would have learned their lesson 12 years ago. In 1995, beloved, beautiful Tejano music star, Selena Quintanilla-Perez, best known as Selena, was murdered. She was only 23. Initially, there was no network news coverage of her death. Almost immediately, her mostly Latino fans, took to the streets by the tens of thousands to participate in candlelight vigils and all kinds of memorials. One article equates the love fans had for this 23 year old phenomenon, with the love of Elvis or the …

So, John McCain uses the term ‘tar baby’ at a press conference and now regrets it. He didn’t use it to refer to African Americans, but to reference to a sticky situation. I won’t belabor the definition, but you can click here to read what Wikipedia has to say about the phrase ‘tar baby’. Anyhow, I’m not offended per se, it just makes him seem out of touch, insensitive and a tad inarticulate to have to use that tarred term. Note to McCain: please do not let us overhear you telling a long …

Is being opposed to full amnesty for illegal immigrants racist? My head says, “No.” My heart wonders, “Maybe… a little?” I am against blanket amnesty for illegal immigrants. Many of the problems associated with illegal immigration and lack of border enforcement are undisputed: terrorists, criminals and drugs can move through our porous borders like water. But my bigger concern is that the constantly expanding pool of cheap, unskilled labor, makes it next to impossible for an unskilled, uneducated American, demanding minimum wage, to grab onto the bottom rung of the …