Displaying more dignity and grace than most anyone else could have mustered under the circumstances, Haiti’s Ambassador to the United States, Raymond Joseph, offered a precise explanation of history to address the odious comments Pat Robertson made yesterday while men, women and children lay trapped in agony.

I am absolutely sick of people defending hate filled oratory.
Trent Lott’s comments “weren’t said with malice”.
Rush Limbaugh’s “just trying to rile people up”.
Both words and deeds count.
Think about it.

The FBI released its 2008 Hate Crime Statistics report yesterday. Overall Hate crimes were up 2%. That’s bad and it gets worse. In the wake of President Obama’s election, hate crimes against blacks rose 8%.
Hate incidents related to the election occurred in all parts of the country. An interracial couple in Apolacan Township, Pa., who supported Obama, found the remains of a burnt cross in their garden. In Madison County, Idaho, elementary school children allegedly chanted “assassinate Obama” on a school bus. In Mount Desert Island, Maine, black effigies …

The Mississippi Klan stirred up plenty of protest and not much else when they marched onto the University of Mississippi campus last Saturday.
OXFORD, Miss. — Wearing traditional red, black and white robes and carrying flags representing the infamous hate group, about 10 hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan protested on the Ole Miss campus Saturday.
The protest, held on the steps of Fulton Chapel, fizzled after less than 10 minutes and faced a large counter-protest from students and onlookers.
The Klan traveled to Oxford to protest Ole Miss Chancellor …

As I read Andrew’s second essay, I begin to accept that we live in mutually exclusive social realities. And that’s a painful recognition for me. As friends we share revulsion at the exploding deficit, clarity about keeping government out of our bedrooms and the belief that it is an inalienable right to keep guns in our homes. Further, we both do our best to accept each person we encounter as an individual without slathering on layers preconceived notions and expectations of stereotypical behavior.
But on the broader political plane, we’re …

“Does Conservative Mean Racist,” kicked off a dynamic discussion over on twitter yesterday. If you have an account, please follow me @allaboutrace and I hope others in the All About Race community will leave their twitter accounts in the comment section here so we can rap through our tweets. Anyhow, reactions to Andrew’s post ranged from frustrated and fed up, to tempered disagreement, to full on support.
I felt some disappointment about the conclusions he reached, but I know he often feels the same about mine. Still, obviously, I am steadfast …

Congressman John Lewis and the white man who beat him bloody during a civil rights protest in 1961, came together to accept the Common Ground award Thursday night. “The Common Ground Awards are presented annually to honor outstanding accomplishments in conflict resolution, negotiation, community building, and peacebuilding. Recipients have made significant contributions toward bridging divides between people, finding solutions to seemingly intractable problems, and providing inspiration, and hope where often there was none.”
The reconciliation journeys of Rep. John Lewis and Elwin Wilson embody the best of these principles.

According to AP:
Elwin …

Gallup is at it again, seeking to quantify racial attitudes that are hard to measure. I’ve never been called by Gallup, but if they asked me questions regarding future racial healing, I would likely give starkly different answers depending what was going on for me at the moment. Some days I’m hopeful, some days not as much. So I wonder what was going on with these respondents when they picked up the phone?
PRINCETON, NJ — A majority of Americans, 56%, believe that a solution to America’s race-relations problem will …

There is nothing more anti-American than to lie about our nation’s multi-colored history. To see our nation in all of her glory is to see our remarkable democracy as an awesome human undertaking. But Pat Buchanan, and so many others like him, will never be able to embrace the promise and the purpose that the Founding Fathers laid out because it now includes all people who seek freedom not just white men.

Since the presidential campaign of 2008 and the election of our nation’s first black president, Patrick J. Buchanan has …

Once upon a time, not too long ago, smart and well meaning conservative friends would say to me, “We conservatives don’t talk about race.” I always laughed at that, mostly because I have too long a memory. I remember racist rants by conservative icons like Pat Buchanan and William F. Buckley. But I appreciated the “big tent” sentiment they were intending to convey.
Now even my conservative friends cannot deny the depth of rotting racist decay eating away at the heart of their movement. I am hoping I will soon hear …

Please click over and take a look at my AOL piece: Supreme Court Rules in Favor of White Firefighters – BV Black Spin posted yesterday about the ‘New Haven 20′. Here’s an excerpt:
I’ve always been wary of the way the city of New Haven handled the results of its now infamous firefighter promotion test. It never made sense to me. When test results came back, and no black firefighters had scores high enough for immediate promotion, New Haven decided to throw out the results of the test on the grounds …

This post is one of many posted in this weekend’s blogging campaign encouraging all of us to remember that we can do better to get our points across than to use simplistic and hateful speech or resort to violence to get our points across. The cartoon of Judge Sotomayor and the murder of Dr. George Tiller brought the sad power of racist marginalization and dehumanizing rhetoric right up to our eyes where we cannot ignore it.

Let me be very clear about why I am offended by Chip Bok’s characterization of …

I remembered that Morgan Freeman paid for a racially integrated prom in his home state of Mississippi, last year. It was a first for his town. I had not remembered that some of the white residents of Charleston, Mississippi, so opposed the idea of a racially integrated prom night, that they sponsored a competing “whites only” prom on the same evening.
But a New York Times profile of another segregated prom season, this time in Montgomery County, Georgia, brought it all back.
The senior proms held by Montgomery County High School students …

If you’re a black male and want to be a successful CEO, it’s better to have a non-threatening ‘babyface’ than one that conveys maturity and power. According to a new study conducted by Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, some people find a serious, mature face on a black man just too scary. Read on:
Black Fortune 500 CEOs with a “babyface” appearance are more likely to lead companies with higher revenues and prestige than Black CEOs who look more mature, an upcoming study says. [American Express CEO, Ken Chenault, pictured above, …

Please join me for All About Race on the Radio this evening at 7pm PST/10pm PST. Tonight it’s 30 minutes of just you and me. I’m going to tell you more about why I talk about race and why you and everybody else should too.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/allaboutrace
Call in number (347) 326-9704
And I’ll share with you my number one pet peeve about comments that come in response to my posts both here and at AOL BlackSpin.
And we’ll talk about a tale of two hit and run cases taking place right here in Los …

Katherine has spoken of being on a journey to learn more about the reality of racism in 2009. Sometimes that journey gets bumpy, as it did this week. Here are her reflections:
When Carmen posted the stunning and unbelievable lyrics from Rolling Stone’s “Brown Sugar” it revealed a shocking tale of slave rape. Carmen asked us if we knew of any other popular music that hummed of racism. I got right to it and began my hunt. Surely and sadly there would be many songs that may have hidden …