Since the first part of this conversation, I’ve been letting your thoughtful comments simmer in my mind. I’ve got more to say, but we’re moving tomorrow and I want to give this conversation the full attention it deserves. So, I promise we will pick it up on Monday.
But in the meantime, please think about and [...]

Several months ago, Topsoil Columnist Andrew Padula submitted a piece triggered by TI’s gun insanity. It was a good post, but in it Andrew made the observation that increasingly, there were two kinds of people in America. Beyond black and white or brown, there were those who were striving, adhering to the law and doing [...]

In the winter of 2004, a source first told me that the Federal government had sanctioned testing an AIDS vaccine on mostly black and Latino foster children ages 1 month to late teens. I did not believe it. When finally convinced that it was true, I sobbed openly as we walked through the park. I [...]

The live discussion on race that followed “Meeting David Wilson” was an uneven exercise. I was disappointed to hear overly simplistic assessments of the problems facing black urban communities and vague proposals for institutional remedies. But how to move forward?
Fellow blogger K Myles has written an exciting post that not only considers the historical context [...]

In the promo for ‘Meeting David Wilson,’ you hear documentarian David A. Wilson make a jarring introduction: “Hello, David Wilson? My name is David Wilson, I believe your family once owned mine.” Let’s talk about race indeed.
‘Meeting David Wilson’ is a 90 minute documentary that follows David A. Wilson as he travels from his [...]

The concept of “race” may be the most powerful social construct ever created. This link takes you to a PBS site that lays out “Ten Quick Facts about Race.” Some highlights:
Race is a modern idea - Ancient societies did not divide people according to physical differences, but according to religion, status, class, even language.
Race [...]

As frequent readers of this blog already know, I have long held that our inability to openly discuss and resolve racial issues limits what Americans will do for each other even as we claim the common, seemingly unifying objective of wanting our country to be as prosperous and as ideal a place that it could [...]

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke out about America’s state of race. And as you’ll see there’s not a lot of daylight between her and Barack Obama on this issue.
“Black Americans were a founding population,” she said. “Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together — Europeans by choice and Africans in [...]

Pastor Rod Parsley yells at the top of his lungs protesting “black genocide.”

Whooo. Can you imagine the Fox news loop if Jeremiah Wright had spoken this sermon in the exact same way?
Big Thanks to n-2-me-i-c for passing this on to us!

I urge you to watch this speech in its entirety. You will be moved.

We the people of America cannot settle for racial politics as usual. Not this time.

Here is the text of his speech “A More Perfect Union”:
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”
Two hundred and twenty one years ago, [...]

My conservative friends think I’ve gone and lost my mind. They think so because standing in the outstretched palm of middle age, I am increasingly politically liberal. Oh sure, my personal evolution goes against trend. In fact I bet you’ve heard some version of the age old saying, “If you’re not liberal in your 20s [...]

UPDATE: And now Clinton issues the non-denial denial - Read more

So with the latest polls showing Clinton losing support in both Ohio and Texas, the Clinton campaign has done exactly.what.I.predicted. they would do. They have reached down to the sewer, grabbed a handful of race-tinged slime and are slinging it hoping it will stick anywhere, [...]

I got sad watching Barack Obama’s speech Tuesday last night. And yes, it was something he said. First Obama stood, basking in the unabashed passion the crowd was sending his way. And then he reminded them:
“Change doesn’t come from the top down, it comes from the bottom up.”
The people roared. And I felt sad [...]

Editorial: ‘Double bubble’ trouble L.A. mess shows need for ballot redesign
…The scale of disenfranchisement is huge – 94,500 of 189,000 decline-to-state votes. That’s half of the nonpartisan ballots. By comparison, in the infamous Florida “butterfly ballot” debacle in the 2000 presidential election, 19,120 Palm Beach County ballots went uncounted because of the bad ballot design.
Worse, [...]

Some bad news from the Courage Campaign:
The bad news?
In what the media is now calling “Double Bubble Trouble,” 94,000 “Decline-to-State” v otes in Los Angeles County — 50% of the total DTS ballots cast — are being rejected due to a ballot design flaw, despite the Courage Campaign’s discovery of the “double bubble” problem [...]