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Heading into the first election in which an African-American will be a major-party presidential nominee, Americans are sharply divided by race, with blacks and whites holding vastly different views of Sen. Barack Obama, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. The results of the poll, conducted during a campaign in which race has been a constant if not always overt issue, suggest that black voters are highly enthusiastic about Obama’s groundbreaking candidacy but do not see it as evidence of significant improvement in race relations. After years of growing political polarization, much of the divide in American politics...

Just yesterday Islam in Action reported the rape of a non-Muslim woman in Brussels, for not wearing a headscarf. Today I am here to report more Islamic hostility in Brussels. A group of Moroccan youths rioted and attacked a group of white supporters of the football club RSC Anderlecht. The evening before the attack, a blog had called for attacks on the "white" supporters of the club, and "to burn pubs, houses and cars." For the rest.... http://islaminaction08.blogspot.com/2008/06/ethnic-war-in-brussels-moroccans-attack.html

An open letter to the Rev. Jesse Jackson, re: Don Imus Frankly, Jesse, I don’t give a damn what Imus said now. Frankly, Jesse, I’m fed up with the double standard that’s been imposed in America for the last twenty years. And I’m not talking about the old double standard whereby randy guys such as you were considered cool when you bedded down and impregnated some female not your wife and the poor female was considered a tramp. Frankly, Jesse, I’m also fed up with the fact you, and Reverend Al, and Reverend Wright, and a slew of other Black...

From his book and public statements Obama tells in his own words what his views on race relations really are.

How black is too black? Millions of African-Americans celebrated Barack Obama’s historic victory, seeing in it a reflection — sudden and shocking — of their own expanded horizons. But whether Mr. Obama captures the White House in November will depend on how he is seen by white Americans. Indeed, some people argue that one of the reasons Mr. Obama was able to defeat Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was that a large number of white voters saw him as “postracial.” In other words, Mr. Obama was black, but not too black. But where is the line? Does it change over time?...

Senator Barack Obama is now the Democratic nominee for President of the United States of America. This seems like a good time to consider who this man is. Here are some quotes from his autobiographies Dreams of My Father and The Audacity of Hope that might help Americans and the rest of the world get a sense of this man who is one general election away from the Oval Office. Before you read them consider that Henry Kissinger once remarked that presidents come into office and leave office the the same men. The job is too demanding to permit opportunities...

This message is for that oppressed, neglected, passed over, bitter, gun-toting group of people otherwise known as working-class white males: You really don't matter. To all the hand-wringing over Sen. Barack Obama's alleged problem with winning over the votes of those white men, let's counter with some other facts. Obama has a lot of company. John Kerry. Al Gore. Bill Clinton. Michael Dukakis. Walter Mondale. Jimmy Carter. Just to name the six most recent Democratic nominees who lost the white, working-class, male vote. In a matchup with Sen. John McCain, Sen. Hillary Clinton does no better than Obama among these...

Before the Second World War, American Westerns presented what later came to be seen as a "naive" view of what might be called white borderer culture and conflicts. The "good" of the Scots-Irish based and European immigrant and settler population was not just an underlying assumption but a central and explicit thesis in the Westerns, most of which were made by “poverty row” studios and distributed to rural and small-town theaters—and seen by the grandchildren of the very people portrayed. By the 1950s, this was no longer the case. The movie Western had moved from “poverty row” (abetting the demise...

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...

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Militant supporters of President Robert Mugabe targeted whites Monday, forcing about a dozen ranchers and farmers off their land as Zimbabwe's longtime ruler fanned racial tensions amid fears he will turn to violence to hold on to power. Mugabe's opponents pressed a lawsuit seeking to compel the publication of results of the March 29 presidential election that they say Morgan Tsvangirai won. The opposition leader urged the international community to persuade Mugabe to step down. "Major powers here, such as South Africa, the U.S. and Britain, must act to remove the white-knuckle grip of Mugabe's suicidal reign...

(April 2) - An Atlanta, Georgia, judge who ordered white lawyers out of his courtroom so he could lecture African-American defendants called that decision a "mistake" Tuesday night. Judge Marvin Arrington says he is fed up with the defendants he keeps seeing in his courtroom. "In retrospect, it was a mistake," Judge Marvin Arrington told CNN. "Because my sheriff said to me, 'Judge, that message should be given to everybody' -- 'Don't violate the law, make something out of yourself, go to school, find a role model, somebody that will help you advance your life.'" Arrington, who is African-American, is...

In the 1960's I had a lady friend who loved Robert Redford. So, naturally, I got dragged to all of Redford's movies. I saw "The Candidate" several times. In that film, Mr. McKay (Redford), a "community organizer" like Barack Obama, hatches a slogan, "McKay, The Better Way" to run for office. Ironically, Barack "Barry" Obama has now chosen "The Better Way" as his mantra through February 10th. Well. Obama's slogan has about as much substance as the celluloid version popularized by Robert Redford. Obama is entirely a creation of wealthy contributors and powerful, liberal media interests. So what he does...

It was a tale of sex, violence and a young girl crossing the color line. It was raw, gripping, sad and triumphant, tracing the heroine's successful escape from an environment of abandonment, abuse, poverty and gangs. It was supposed to be true. Not a word of it was. The recent media frenzy over Margaret Seltzer's "Love and Consequences," yet another hoax memoir published by yet another respectable publishing house, has subsided, but the perplexing questions remain: Why would a writer take the huge risk of publishing an easily discredited story, and what enticed a respectable publishing house to buy and...

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...

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...

In Denver. Denver is not equipped to handle any convention scenario other than a coronation, and certainly not the most (potentially) contentious national convention in 40 years. It is important to point out that the state of Colorado, and the city of Denver, is currently nearly completely controlled by Democrats at every level of government. This puts these locals in a box, politically and from a law enforcement standpoint. This sets up a scenario similar to Seattle 1999 WTO debacle. I happened to be living in downtown Seattle during that awful experience, and what stands out is that the city...

I've expressed admiration for Barack Obama's political skills, but maybe, in a time of stress, his inexperience is beginning to show. In an interview earlier today, he referred to his grandmother--the one he slandered in his speech on Tuesday--as a "typical white person." Think about it: can you imagine any Presidential candidate, in any context, describing anyone as a "typical black person?" Or a "typical Asian person?" Worse, what Obama said was that the "typical white person" views others of different races with fear and suspicion. Obama appears to be digging himself in deeper and deeper. =========================== Listen to Obama...

Sometimes, like a Cinderella team marching through March, Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign seems nothing short of charmed. It helps that while Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has 10 weeks to make Obama totally and entirely unelectable, Obama just has to wait out the clock. But the outside help Obama is getting (some that he asked for, some that he didn't) is the X-factor -- and it means that, even as Obama grapples with perhaps the biggest challenge to his candidacy, he will be the nominee short of something else dramatic happening in the race that's already seen everything. To survey...

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...

Asian women, fancy coffee, farmers markets, dinner parties and gay friends — these are just a sampling of life's pleasures — if you're white. Excuse me? That's according to Christian Lander, the (white) wit behind the Web sensation Stuff White People Like blog, an irreverent daily missive on the passions of posh urbanites of the Caucasian persuasion. It's the latest in a string of racially charged blogs (first came theassimilatednegro.com, then angryasian.com) that act as a virtual shrink's sofa for those tackling the tricky topics of race and class. Lander is not the only one who uses the Web site...

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,...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

Once again the Democrats seem determined to steal defeat from the jaws of victory. Consider the possibilities after the Pennsylvania primary. Let us assume that Sen. Hillary Clinton wins it. However, Sen. Barack Obama still has a lead in election delegates and a slim advantage in popular votes. There are two courses the party can take. They can leave the final choice to the so-called "superdelegates" whom the party has chosen to represent office holders -- mayors, governors, senators and such like. Having read the polls and noting that Sen. Clinton consistently loses the general election to almost any Republican...

There's no whiter place in England and Wales than Easington in County Durham. As a survey finds white working class people feel forgotten and dejected, what do the people in this former colliery town think? Where Easington colliery stood, there is now virtually nothing. Just the jet black monument to a disappeared past, made from the cages that once took thousands of men underground. Face east and there is the cold North Sea. Look west and there are the streets and streets of cramped Victorian colliery homes, the inspiration for many a Geordie folk song. But the streets are not...

Over the past two decades, Britain has been through a revolution. The extent of the change, in both scale and speed, has probably been unique in the peacetime history of our country....Globalisation, mass immigration and economic upheaval have helped to transform the fabric of our nation....Today, we are one of the most culturally and racially diverse places in Europe. These changes have been the subject of noisy debate...yet it is a curious irony that...one voice has been largely absent: that of the white working class.... the voices of the British working-class public have been all but ignored. Given that they...

Over the past two decades, Britain has been through a revolution. The extent of the change, in both scale and speed, has probably been unique in the peacetime history of our country. Globalisation, mass immigration and economic upheaval have helped to transform the fabric of our nation. Today, we are one of the most culturally and racially diverse places in Europe. These changes have been the subject of noisy debate within the media, politics and academia, yet it is a curious irony that, in all the heated discussion about the consequences of this revolution, one voice has been largely absent:...

Europe is a dying continent. I say this not as a criticism, but rather as a statement of fact. In Europe, an acute failure to produce the next generation has created a looming demographic crisis. According to research by both the CIA and the U.N., every single member of the European Union has a birthrate significantly below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman. In the CIA World Factbook, Germany had a birthrate of 1.36 children per woman in 2007, and Spain and Italy had birthrates of 1.29. At such low levels of fertility, within 100 years, those three...

I thoroughly expected the blogosphere to pick up on this story, but I guess they've been too focussed on Obama's fabrications, and Chelsea Clinton. Shockingly enough, the story isn't even a most read on Fox News' website. Why? I don't know, but I am remedying the situation now. Cornell University has released a controversial study that will accomplish literally nothing more than sowing more discontent among the races, and serve as yet another recruiting tool for white supremacist groups. So let's all pat Cornell on the back, and bask in the racially charged anti-glory that is their latest contribution to...

Even some supporters worry that Obama is doing little to retool his message to reach the demographic groups that have challenged him -- working-class whites and Latinos. When Barack Obama wins, he often wins big. This weekend's primaries in Maine, Nebraska, Washington state, and Louisiana played to his strengths in small caucus states and among African Americans. And demographics will favor him again this Tuesday in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, which will feature not only large African American communities but also significant numbers of affluent, highly educated voters and, in Virginia, independents. But February's post-Super Tuesday primary schedule obscures...

Whites To Become Minority by 2050, Study Predicts BY SARAH GARLAND - Staff Reporter of the Sun February 11, 2008 URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/71104 Non-Hispanic whites will become a minority in America and the Hispanic population will triple in size in less than 50 years if immigration flows carry on at the current rate, according to a new study published today by the Pew Hispanic Center. Even if new restrictions are placed on immigration, immigrants will be responsible for more than 70% of the nation's population growth by 2050 as the native population ages and its birth rate declines, the study found,...

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama may be competing in the South Carolina Democratic Primary Saturday, but they're also vying for the top prize in another contest: The Oppression Sweepstakes. That's how Michael Jelani Cobb, an African-American historian, describes the surge of venom that recently erupted between the Clinton and Obama camps. The sweepstakes kicks in when two excluded groups find themselves competing for the same prize. He says that took place in the 19th century when the abolitionist, Frederick Douglass and his ally, women's rights' activist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, argued over what group should first be...

What if white history and white people were excluded from society's consciousness except for a handful of days? White History Week is an effective way to ask that question, says Jered Ebenreck, one of the event's planners. "How would you feel if you had just a month for your history? It's kind of a silly notion. We have the whole year for white people." That's part of the genesis for White History Week at Out ch'Yonda. It's a temporary re-imagining of a world where the default setting isn't "white." And it's not comfortable to talk about, say the organizers, who...

Air America radio host Randi Rhodes unleashed a torrent of what's being called "liberal racism" and accused Oprah Winfrey of "acting" when she stumped for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. On her show last week, Rhodes discussed Oprah's appearances on Obama's behalf, and told listeners: "She was blacker than Obama yesterday . . . Let me tell you something. Everyone who watches Oprah are the whitest people in the world . . . Even the black men who watch Oprah are white women while they watch Oprah . . . "She's like so unbelievably white . . . Why is...

Representing 38% of all voters, white men represent the second largest block in the American electorate, after white females. It is these 97 million white males to whom the Republican Party owes it electoral success in five out of the last seven presidential campaigns. The reason is simple: White males have abandoned the Democratic Party in droves. While the liberal media consistently depict the gender gap as a Republican liability, in fact, the gap has long worked to the advantage of the G.O.P. This media misportrayal is the subject of David Paul Kuhn’s recent book, The Neglected Voter: White Men...

AUTUMN AND a new academic year are upon us, which means that selective colleges are engaged in the annual ritual of singing the praises of their new freshman classes. Surf the websites of such institutions and you will find press releases boasting that they have increased their black and Hispanic enrollments, admitted bumper crops of National Merit scholars or became the destination of choice for hordes of high school valedictorians. Many are bragging about the large share of applicants they rejected, as a way of conveying to the world just how popular and selective they are. What they almost never...