Free Republic

Morrisville, N.C. — The president of the North Carolina NAACP was escorted off an American Airlines flight Friday night. Rev. William Barber was returning to Raleigh from Washington, D.C., when, he says, he was removed from the flight. [snip]Barber said a passenger in a seat nearby was talking loudly as the plane filled up and asked the stewardess to request the passenger lower his voice. After requesting assistance from the flight attendant, Barber said he overheard the nearby passenger making "distasteful" and "disparaging" comments about him. According to Barber's statement, the passenger said he had problems with "those people" and...

The next shoe is dropping in an effort to end what is described as decades of persistent and systemic bias at the agencies that create, buy and place television commercials and other forms of media advertising. The N.A.A.C.P. is calling on the nation’s 25 biggest advertisers — on TV and in other media — to require that their agencies use racially diverse teams of employees in creative and account-management posts. The first letter in the initiative is to be sent to Procter & Gamble, the No. 1 advertiser in the United States with ad spending last year, according to the...

President Bush acknowledged persistent racism in America and lamented the Republican Party's bumpy relations with black voters as he addressed the NAACP's annual convention Thursday for the first time in his presidency. "I understand that racism still lingers in America," Bush told the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "It's a lot easier to change a law than to change a human heart. And I understand that many African-Americans distrust my political party." That line generated boisterous applause and cheers from the thousands in the audience, which generally gave the president a polite, reserved reception. "I consider it...

Black civil-rights activists canceled plans for a protest after discovering a child insulted by California Education Secretary Richard Riordan was not African-American as originally believed, but a blonde, white girl. In an incident captured on video [Requires Real Player], Riordan, the former Los Angeles mayor, stunned participants in a promotional event July 1 at the Santa Barbara library by jokingly telling a 6-year-old her name, Isis, meant "stupid dirty girl." Alice Huffman, president of the California chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said Thursday that Riordan "is not suitable to lead education in our state"...