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Both the race for the U.S. presidency and the race of one of the candidates have now become the main focus of many Americans. This is truly an exciting year in national politics and one that will determine just how far America has come in bridging the racial divide. When women state that they will vote for Hillary Clinton because she is a woman, there is no great outcry. But, somehow, when blacks state that they will vote for Barack Obama because of his partial African heritage, all of a sudden it becomes a negative issue. In 1980, when I...

WorldNetDaily.com quotes Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media as saying: "The bill defines the term 'Millennium Development Goals' as the goals set out in the United Nations Millennium Declaration..." "In addition to seeking to eradicate poverty, that declaration commits nations to banning 'small arms and light weapons' and ratifying a series of treaties, including the International Criminal Court Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol (global warming treaty), the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child."

Obama, speaking to a group of supporters in San Francisco, CA. , recently said: "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment...

An invitation to a "diversity workshop" sent to Sandia Labs employees last week by labs management has drawn complaints because of its suggestion that white people are inherently racist. "Recent studies suggest whites' lack of awareness about other cultures has to do with whites' commitment to maintaining higher social status, or 'white privilege,' '' the invitation said. It also said whites "are likely to persist in racist behaviors unless persuaded to abolish the privileges they receive as members of the white race." Sandia staff received a dozen calls from employees upset about the wording, labs spokesman Michael Padilla said. He...

Maybe, just maybe, it’s now worth at least asking whether Hillary Clinton might wind up as the Democratic candidate for vice president. When the chatter about a Democratic “dream ticket” began last year, it was easy to dismiss. Either Clinton or Obama would win a clear victory in the primaries and, after what inevitably would be a contentious campaign, each would want as little to do with the other as possible. Clinton, if she emerged victorious, would instead choose some kind of national security graybeard to her political right, a retired general perhaps, or maybe even a Republican. Likewise, Obama...

In some ways, Barack Obama's speech on race last week was as brilliant as it was nuanced. But for all its rhetorical beauty, it was also an enormous step backward and, in the end, a rather self-serving call for more discussion about racial grievance in a country that has already done way too much talking. Until last week, so much of Obama's appeal lay in the fact that he was not asking us to talk about the racial divide. Instead, he offered himself as a living and breathing symbol of racial reconciliation; his very origins pointed to the goal of...

When Democrats contemplate the apocalypse these days, they have visions of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton slugging it out à la Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter at the 1980 convention. The campaign's current trajectory is, in fact, alarmingly similar to the one that produced that disastrous affair. Back then, Carter had built up a delegate lead with early wins in Iowa, New Hampshire, and several Southern states. But, as the primary season dragged on, Kennedy began pocketing big states and gaining momentum. Once all the voting ended and Kennedy came up short, he eyed the New York convention as a...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Barack Obama's speech last week, hastily prepared to extinguish the firestorm over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, won critical praise for style and substance but failed politically. By elevating the question of race in America, the front-running Democratic presidential candidate has deepened the dilemma created by his campaign's success against the party establishment's anointed choice, Hillary Clinton. In rejecting the racist views of his longtime spiritual mentor but not disowning him, Obama has unwittingly enhanced his image as the African-American candidate -- not just a remarkable candidate who happens to be black. That poses a racial dilemma for...

It is a tribute to Hillary Clinton that even though, rationally, political soothsayers think she can no longer win, irrationally, they wonder how she will pull it off. It's impossible to imagine The Terminator, as a former aide calls her, giving up. Unless every circuit is out, she'll regenerate enough to claw her way out of the grave, crawl through the Rezko Memorial Lawn and up Obama's wall, hurl her torso into the house and brutally haunt his dreams. "It's like one of those movies where you think you know the end, but then you watch with your fingers over...

Even though Barack Obama has "moved on" from the messy association that he has recently been forced to explain to man who had been his pastor for 20 years, it is clear - the voters haven't. There are legitimate questions being raised about a relationship that spans a generation and the beliefs of a man who has on multiple dozens of occasions issued some of the most vitriolic, bigoted, racism imaginable in America today. No doubt one of the most infamous video moments recently unearthed was Jeremiah Wright's use of what he cleverly believed to be a cute play on...

WASHINGTON -It is already easy to imagine the Republican attack ads against Barack Obama. They open with video of his wife, Michelle, saying she was proud of America "for the first time in my adult lifetime" because of her husband's presidential candidacy. Cut to the Illinois Senator explaining that he doesn't wear an American flag lapel pin because it is a "substitute for true patriotism." Then flash a clip of Obama explaining that his Caucasian grandmother was a "typical white person" because she uttered racial epithets and was afraid of black people. Finally, the coup de grace, pictures of Obama's...

Watching the “Reverend” Jeremiah Wright gesticulate like a horny peacock and spew out ignorance, hatred, and bitterness towards America truly inspired my religious faith. Once Wright pointed out that he was “still in Bible country,” I began to “love the hell out of” rich, white people just as much as Wright does. How could so many people not understand that white people have caused all the world’s problems? As Wright pointed out to his congregation, the Bible says it’s so. I’m not sure what verse actually says that, but I’m now betting that rich, white people are responsible for my...

Some 50 delegates were reportedly poised to unite behind Barack Obama if he had won by even 1 point in Texas. He lost the popular vote by 100,000 ballots, and now we learn that 100,000 Republicans voted for Hillary Clinton, probably not because of some change in party allegiance but because they thought she would be the easier candidate to beat. This kind of strategic voting often backfires (think Ralph Nader). The Texas crossovers are winners. By helping to prolong the Democratic race, they can claim credit for weakening the eventual nominee, whoever it turns out to be. Obama has...

Mr. Obama’s Philadelphia speech, in spite of its eloquent passages expressing his hope for better racial relations in America, is a mastery example of literary subterfuge, the broadening of the scenery whereby an object of inquiry becomes blurred and lost in the background, or more bluntly, the escaping of a slippery fish from a pond into a lake to hide in a wider expanse of water. His speech is essentially a sophisticated lawyerly defense of Rev Wright’s sin on the basis of self-defense. While Mr. Obama’s understanding on the root causes of America’s racial problems is quite apt, he attempts...

WASHINGTON - Even if Hillary Rodham Clinton and her aides do not mention Barack Obama's fiery-tongued spiritual mentor, don't expect the Illinois senator's well-publicized speech Tuesday to make the controversy disappear, political strategists said this week. Reporters, talk-show hosts and others will keep asking about Obama's close and long-standing relationship to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose most bombastic comments came to dominate the Democratic presidential contest recently, the strategists predicted in interviews. In video clips playing on Internet sites, Wright can be heard arguing that HIV-AIDS was a U.S. government plot to wipe out "people of color," and that God...

An interesting photo has surfaced (h/t Drudge): That's the Rev. Jeremiah Wright grippin' and grinnin' with President Bill Clinton on September 11th, 1998, at a meeting of various clerics where Clinton gave his "I have sinned" speech following the Lewinsky affair. I guess Rev. Wright didn't consider an invitation to the White House as "being treated the same way Clinton treated Lewinsky", to quote the good Reverend. The same day this photo popped up, the story leaked out that the Clintons are shopping the Rev. Wright controversy around to superdelegates in the hopes of getting them to abandon Obama While...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Democrat Barack Obama suffered in the polls Thursday after a much-acclaimed speech on race that, pundits said, had failed to defuse voters' anger over rage-filled sermons by his former pastor. Waging an acrimonious battle against Hillary Clinton for the Democrats' White House nomination, Obama confessed to being bruised by the controversy surrounding his longtime Chicago preacher, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. "In some ways this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that, you know, the odds of me getting elected have always been lower than some of the other conventional...

For most white folks, indignation just doesn't wear well. Once affected or conjured up, it reminds one of a pudgy man, wearing a tie that may well have fit him when he was fifty pounds lighter, but which now cuts off somewhere above his navel and makes him look like an idiot. Indignation doesn't work for most whites, because having remained sanguine about, silent during, indeed often supportive of so much injustice over the years in this country--the theft of native land and genocide of indigenous persons, and the enslavement of Africans being only two of the best examples--we are...

There was a time when patriotism and an outsize love of country was a given in anyone running for president of the United States. Not any more. Barack Obama and his wife have demonstrated that being black means never having to say you’re sorry about your — or your fellow blacks’ — conditional love for America. At two Wisconsin rallies last month, Michelle Obama declared, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.” For such transparent civic disdain, a white candidate’s wife would have been made to crawl over broken glass to beg forgiveness,...

More than half of voters are less likely to support Barack Obama for president after hearing the anti-American rants of his longtime Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a shocking poll revealed yesterday. The Rasmussen Reports survey found that Wright's controversial comments made 56 percent of voters, including 44 percent of Democrats, less inclined to vote for Obama. Two-thirds of the 1,200 people polled said they knew of Wright's statements, which have been broadcast repeatedly on media outlets over the past several days. And 73 percent of voters, including 58 percent of black voters, called Wright's comments racially divisive. In...

It is a major scandal that threatens to derail Barack Obama's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, but the mainstream media is treating it as a minor political scuffle, says Fox's Bill O'Reilly. In his talking points memo Monday night, O'Reilly played tapes of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright's (Obama's former pastor's) rants against the United States and then said that all clear-thinking Americans including Sen. Obama are appalled by what he called "those hateful words." Noting that Obama said that the picture being painted of Wright is not accurate, O'Reilly wanted to know what about it was inaccurate and...

There are moments — increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns — when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with. Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state. Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is...

Obama’s speech is out at Drudge and reading it I find it lacking. Maybe in person it was not so bad, but most of us won’t be listening to it or seeing it. Most of will have to simply read it. The first problem is the history lesson on this great and imperfect nation. Obama comes of sounding like he is the only one on a journey to perfect the union, to move beyond the divisions and hate: "This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of...

It was extremely unlikely that Hillary Clinton was going to overcome Barack Obama's lead in delegates, states and total votes and take the Democratic nomination, but Obama's speech this morning -- graceful, thoughtful, nuanced, sweeping, challenging, unprecedented -- pretty much wiped out any chance at all. It was a speech Hillary could never have given -- really, few U.S. politicians ever could have given. I write this not just because I think this will dampen the Rev. Wright controversy. I write this because Obama did an extraordinary job of presenting himself as the candidate of "the better angels of our...

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama in a speech Tuesday addressed the controversy surrounding his former minister, using it as an opportunity to challenge Americans to take a closer look at race relations. Speaking to supporters at Philadelphia's National Constitution Center, the Democratic presidential candidate said he rejected racially charged comments made by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but he tried to explain the root of those remarks. Wright formerly preached at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where the senator from Illinois worships. Some of Wright's old sermons came under fire after an ABC News report last week,...

Ezra Klein’s a smart guy, so I’m assuming this is a parody of liberal cluelessness rather than the real thing: "Does anyone believe a long association with Jerry Falwell's church would have done anything but help McCain in the Republican primary, and gotten Democrats tagged as anti-religion when they tried to point out Falwell's nuttiness in the general? It's fine to be a Christian extremist in America. It's fine to believe, and say publicly, that everyone who hasn't accepted Jesus Christ into their heart will roast in eternal hellfire, fine to believe that the homosexuals caused Hurricane Katrina and the...

The Early Show did its best this morning to help Barack Obama climb out of the hole he's dug for himself with his close association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In a set-up segment, CBS's Dean Reynolds rhetorically asked: "the question is whether the rhetoric is so remarkable, because in African-American churches pastors often seek to rouse their congregants to self-reliance by speaking harshly about the country's troubled racial past and the need to overcome it." Nice try, but how does accusing the US government of introducing AIDS and giving black people drugs equate to a call for self-reliance? Reynolds...

The eruption of outrage, shock and fear that is flowing over Barack Obama’s campaign like hot lava because his pastor has preached some strident sermons tells us one thing for certain: Many white people don’t know black people at all. If they did, they would know that Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago is hardly the only black minister who uses the pulpit to rant against racial duplicity and injustice. The black church has always been the place for letting our hair down and speaking our peace -- a safe haven from the criminations outside. It’s how and why the black...

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright thinks that, given their treatment by white America, black Americans have no reason to sing "God Bless America." "The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America," he told his congregation. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human." I'm not a believer in guilt by association, or the campaign vaudeville of rival politicians insisting this or that candidate dissociate himself from remarks by some fellow he had a 30-second grip'n'greet with a decade...

Editor's Note: The following report contains objectionable language. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright's former church sharply criticized the media Sunday for recent coverage of his past controversial sermons, saying in a statement that Wright's "character is being assassinated in the public sphere." The statement comes two days after Barack Obama, a longtime friend of Wright and attendee of the Trinity United Church of Christ, formally denounced the sermons that have recently become the subject of controversy, calling them "inflammatory and appalling." "It is an indictment on Dr. Wright’s ministerial legacy to present his global ministry within a 15- or 30-second sound...

Referencing the recent uproar over his former minister's controversial sermons, Barack Obama on Saturday denounced the "forces of division" that he says have become part of the Democratic race for the White House. Speaking to a sold-out crowd in Plainfield, Indiana, Obama again said he sharply disagreed with the some of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's past statements, saying they remind him of the country's "tragic history when it comes to race." "I knew him and know him as somebody in my church who talked to me about Jesus and family and friendships but clearly had – if all I knew...

Twelve Northrop Grumman Corporation employees were honored with 2007 National Women of Color Technology Awards that recognize the significant accomplishments of minority women in science, engineering and technology, and their leadership and mentor roles in the workplace and community. Photos accompanying this release are available at http://media.primezone.com/noc/ -- Chineta K. Davis, vice president and general manager of Operations at Northrop Grumman's Electronic Systems sector, received the Technologist of the Year award. -- Veronica L. Nelson, manager of the Professional Development Program (PDP) for the company's Electronic Systems sector, received the Corporate Promotion of Education award. -- Zohra Hemani, Hilary Oliphant,...

ALEXANDRIA, Louisiana (CNN) -- Authorities in Alexandria, Louisiana, arrested two people after nooses were seen hanging from the back of a red pickup Thursday night, the city's mayor told CNN. A photograph taken by I-Reporter Casanova Love shows a noose hanging from a red pickup. Alexandria is less than an hour away from Jena, Louisiana, and was a staging area Thursday for protesters who went to the smaller town to demonstrate against the treatment of six black teens known as the "Jena 6" in racially charged incidents.

English girl barred from Government job...because she is wrong kind of whiteBy MARK NICOL - More by this author » Last updated at 10:27am on 5th August 2007A teenage science student has been banned from applying for a training programme with the Environment Agency because she is white and English. The recruitment agency handling the scheme told Abigail Howarth, 18, that there was no point in her submitting an application because of her ethnic background. But bizarrely she could have applied if she had been white and Welsh, Scottish or Irish. Abigail, who wanted to join the Agency's flood...

Raleigh — The man who once pursued rape, sexual assault and kidnapping charges against three former Duke lacrosse players who were later declared innocent by North Carolina's attorney general says he will resign. (Watch Mike Nifong's announcement.) "My community has suffered enough," a tearful Mike Nifong said Friday during his testimony at his State Bar ethics trial to the surprise of the families and defense attorneys of the cleared lacrosse players, as well as others in the courtroom. "Throughout the years I have served as a prosecutor I have always tried to do the right thing," a tearful Mike Nifong...

OAKLAND Managers of Yoshi's, one of the Bay Area's best-known jazz venues, said they will pull the club's first-ever CD off the market after community leaders complained the recording featured no black musicians. Club managers apologized Friday for what they called "a huge mistake" and "a major oversight." They said they plan to create a new recording that better reflects the musicians who play the 340-seat venue at Oakland's Jack London Square. "We really messed up on the CD," said Yoshi's owner Kaz Kajimura. "We apologize to anyone who feels slighted by this omission, as that was never our intention."...

Media criticized over Tenn. slayings http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070518/ap_on_re_us/knoxville_slayings_media http://tinyurl.com/36kmmj By DUNCAN MANSFIELD, Associated Press Writer Fri May 18, 5:15 PM ET KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - In a powerful demonstration of the way the Internet has opened up the mainstream media to intensive second-guessing, bloggers are charging that news outlets have ignored the rape and murder of a young Knoxville couple because of the racial implications of the story. The two victims were white; the five defendants are black. The critics include mainstream conservatives, such as the National Review, and white supremacists. They have drawn comparisons to the Duke lacrosse rape case and wondered...

2 boys plead guilty in beating of women May 11, 2007 INGLEWOOD – Two 15-year-old black boys pleaded guilty yesterday to assault for taking part in a Halloween beating of three white women. In return, prosecutors dropped hate crime allegations and agreed that the boys will be sentenced to three months each in a juvenile camp rather than face potential three-year sentences. Authorities said a group of black youths taunted the three women – one of them 21 years old and the other two 19 – with racial slurs while pelting them with fruit, pumpkins and newspapers, then beat them...

NEW YORK - Democratic presidential contenders are scrambling for support in what's being dubbed the Al Sharpton primary. The civil rights leader livened up the 2004 Democratic primary with his pompadour hairdo and sharp, witty oratory. This election, the high-profile Sharpton, fresh from the fight over Don Imus' derogatory remarks, is attracting all the party's major candidates this week for his annual National Action Network convention. The solid attendance — starting with John Edwards on Wednesday and continuing with Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) later this week — reflects Sharpton's prominence in the party,...

Imagine sending your kids off to school, but when they get to the bus they are told they can't get on because they speak English. That's right, English. It happened to a few children in St. Paul and now the school district is apologizing. Rachel Armstrong sent her kids to pick up the bus as usual Monday, but after the driver let the kids on, he told them he would not pick them up again. He even said he wouldn't take them home that afternoon. Armstrong left work early Tuesday, forced to pick up her kids from Phalen Lake Elementary...

Nanny Hunt Can Be a ‘Slap in the Face’ for Blacks Last month, Jennifer Freeman sat in a Chicago coffee bar, counting her blessings and considering her problem. She had a husband with an M.B.A. degree, two children and a job offer that would let her dig out the education degree she had stashed away during years of playdates and potty training. But she could not accept the job. After weeks of searching, Ms. Freeman, who is African-American, still could not find a nanny for her son, 5, and daughter, 3. Agency after agency told her they had no one...

Until June, the (Seattle) school district's Web site declared that "cultural racism'' includes "emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology,'' "having a future time orientation'' (planning ahead) and "defining one form of English as standard.'' The site also asserted that only whites can be racists, and disparaged assimilation as the "giving up'' of one's culture. After this propaganda provoked outrage, the district, saying it needed to "provide more context to readers'' about "institutional racism,'' put up a page saying that the district's intention is to avoid "unsuccessful concepts such as a melting pot or colorblind mentality.'' The Supreme...

SEATTLE -- This city's school district decided in 2000 that because the son of Jill Kurfirst and the daughter of Winnie Bachwitz are white, they should be assigned to an inferior and distant high school. If they had not left the Seattle school system, this would have required them to rise at 5 a.m. in order to leave home by 5:30 a.m., alone and in the dark, to take the first of three buses, returning home between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., with almost no time left for homework, family activities and adequate sleep. The parents argue that the racial...

The majority of the attacks were carried out by five members of a group within Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam called the "Death Angels." Jesse Lee Cooks, J.C. Simon, Larry Green, Manuel Moore and Anthony Harris were part of this group which believed that whites were created 3,000 years ago by a black mad scientist named Yacub who wanted a race of inferiors to rule over. Death Angels believed they could earn "points" towards going to heaven when they died if they killed whites. For them, whites were not human beings but "grafted snakes," "blue-eyed devils" and "white motherf-----s."

Can you imagine if the woman had been african american and wandered into a white suburb? This is getting little if any play in Chicago. Roeper is a liberal but is one I enjoy reading. Most people outside Chicago know him better as half of Ebert and Roeper.

Americans love to poll, test and otherwise assess themselves. A news item barely hits the wires before a poll follows indicating Americans' reaction. Applying for a new job? Just fill out this short questionnaire to determine whether you're racist, sexist, homophobic, heterophobic, ageist, height-ist, or a fat-o-phobe. In that spirit of sensitivity, I submit the following pop quiz to gauge your bias as a news consumer. After reading the following characteristics, please select the college group that most likely fits the description: The group has a 100 percent college graduation rate. Sixty percent have a 3.0 grade point average or...

(Ansonia-WTNH, Apr. 8, 2006 11:20 PM) _ An Ansonia 12-year-old is in some trouble tonight after he claims he was abducted and assaulted by White men in robes. The boy claimed that he was attacked because of the color of his skin. Now, it turns out that Ansonia police have determined the boy's story is a lie. Ansonia police told us earlier today they were investigating a claim of an assault to a child. His mother originally told us her child told her he was the target of racism. In fact, she was so scared she, and the NAACP asked...

In her opinion sustaining the use of race in admissions in the 2003 University of Michigan Law School case, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor spoke of the "deference" owed to institutions of higher education as they make "complex educational judgments." In the three years since the former justice wrote that opinion, the case for such deference has been seriously eroded by the discovery of educational judgments involving race and also sex that, however complex you might suppose them to be, are plainly against the law.Hundreds of colleges and universities, it turns out, maintained programs--summer internships, scholarships, and paid teaching fellowships--for which...

A prestigious Seattle prep school that touts Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen among its alumni, canceled an appearance by conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza after complaints from a group of teachers and some parents. D'Souza, a Hoover Institution fellow and former Reagan administration policy analyst, was scheduled to speak in March on U.S. foreign policy and Iraq at Lakeside School, but faculty members objected after reading some of his writings on race-related issues. A Lakeside staff member explained through an e-mail, according to Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Robert Jamieson Jr., "Even if an intention was simply to offer diverse viewpoints,...

NASHVILLE - The Legislature's Black Caucus has not existed as a nonprofit corporation for 20 years, raising an array of questions that the organization's chairman declined to answer Wednesday. Records at the secretary of state's office show the Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators had its corporate charter revoked in 1985 for failure to file required reports. A document to re-establish the caucus as a legal entity was filed Tuesday, listing Allyson Sneed, executive secretary to caucus Chairman Johnny Shaw, D-Bolivar, as the incorporator. "The caucus has been operating as a nonprofit. They are a nonprofit organization," said Sneed. "We...