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 …

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 …

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.

Please, can you explain to me why the word “Negro” is still being used in casual discussion in 2010? (…2008 to be precise…)

Most importantly, please explain to me, after so much interracial dialogue, why some white people cannot distinguish between racial ignorance and racial hatred?
Trent Lott’s comments on longing for a segregated America = Racial Hatred
Harry Reid’s word choice in his description of Barack Obama’s acceptability to white voters = Racial Ignorance
Disturbing racial ignorance, but not surprising. [Added 5:45a]
I watched racially stunted and ever-stubborn Joe Scarborough refuse …

By Andrew Padula
A couple of days after the election last year, I attended a foreign policy seminar in downtown D.C. I had really been looking forward to this opportunity to rub elbows with international political and business leaders while enjoying one heck of a free lunch buffet. Unfortunately, the most memorable part of this day was my commute on the pride of our nation’s rail system, the Washington Metro. Three or four stops had passed by on my trip home. I was sitting quietly by myself …

We have Nina Turner, a black politician, being caricatured as Aunt Jemima in a black newspaper, the Call & Post. Why? Because she disagreed with them on some legislation. Unacceptable in my opinion and the good news is, I think, most black folks are fed up with this kind of silencing tactic as well.

Read my full article over at Aol’s BlackSpin. Here’s an excerpt:
The decision by Call & Post, owned by Don King, to call-out Nina Turner by portraying her as the subservient, smiling, always-white-people pleasing Aunt Jemima, because she …

You have to hand it to Glenn Beck. He is a wizard at whipping up controversy and, therefore, publicity. Beck’s latest dangling shiny object comes in the form of an announcement that in order to support the sales of his upcoming book which will outline a 100 year plan for America, he is organizing a gathering on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The date is August 28, 2010; the 47th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech.
At [a] rally and in a letter on his …

Mike Huckabee has done something reasonable and, in these divided times, that makes it newsworthy and admirable. In a talk at the Hudson Union Society, where he discussed his forthcoming book, “A Simple Christmas”, Huckabee pushed back against the conservatives who criticized President Obama’s visit to Dover Air Force base. Via Huffington Post:
When he [Barack Obama] was at Dover the other day, and went there to pay respect for soldiers, I heard a lot of people on the Right say “Aw, that’s just a cheap photo-op.” No, I think it …

Jesse Jackson who not long ago expressed his support for then presidential candidate Barack Obama by wanting to “cut his nuts off,” has now turned his attention to supporting health care reform legislation in his own inimitable way. Via Talking Points Memo:
The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday night criticized Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) for voting against the Democrats’ signature healthcare bill.
“We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.” Source: …

One of the most interesting black conservative blogs around is Booker Rising. I recommend it. Shay Riley and I don’t agree on everything, but I almost always understand her point of view and I don’t recall her reflexively calling black people who disagree with her one derogatory name or another. I admit I figured folks over at Booker Rising would all be doing back flips of joy over the Black Conservative Town Hall Glenn Beck show. [Click Here for Full Show Transcript]
Not exactly.
A number of Booker Rising readers and other …

A Black conservative town hall filled the studio audience of Glenn Beck’s Friday the 13th show. I wouldn’t characterize it as a horror story, far from it. Solid points about the need to instill more black urban kids with a love for education and learning were made. But I will say right off that it was frightening to observe the monstrous delusions of many who spoke during the show. And what had me gasping in cynical laughter, was that every time a ‘black conservative’ stood up and said anything that …

I haven’t had anything poetic or particularly insightful to say about the disturbing arrest of esteemed scholar and leading intellectual, Harvard Professor Henry Louis ‘Skip’ Gates. Nothing surprises me anymore. From the moment I heard the story, all I could think of was Joe Horn, the Texas man who shot two burglary suspects in the back, as they ran away from his neighbor’s home with a bag full of their stuff. Mr. Horn told the operator he was going to go out and kill two people and lo and behold …

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 …

by Andrew Padula
I can’t imagine how horrible it must feel to be a parent who had someone on a national stage joke about having their child raped at a public venue. What must be even worse is having people come to the defense of this cur and justify his actions because the child’s older sister had become pregnant as a teen. In my mind, nothing can justify these vulgar attacks perpetrated on the children of the standing Governor of the state of Alaska. But this is not …