(SPLC) It was supposed to be the start of another school day for 15-year-old Marie Justeen Mancha as she sat in her bedroom, waiting for her mother to return from an errand in town.

But on this morning in September 2006, Mancha, a U.
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(wftv) Racial slurs targeting Barack Obama were discovered spray painted tonight on dozens of city vehicles in Orlando. The vandalism happened in a City of Orlando parking lot on the corner of south and orange. Phrases including “Obmama smokes crack” and others phrases with racial slurs were written in blue spray paint on the white city cars and trucks. Other vehicles appeared to have had their gas tanks tampered with. Along with the paint, hundreds of business cards were left on windshields.  More...

(fox) I blame the white media — liberal and conservative — for the sensational coverage of Don Imus' latest attempt at shock-jock relevancy. The O. J. Simpson double-murder trial taught white television and radio executives they could attract huge ratings by allowing a white host to referee a simple-minded argument pitting opposing views on an alleged black-white racial dispute. The show topics change from week to week, bouncing from the Jena Six to Imus to Duke lacrosse to whatever most-coveted guest Al Sharpton has on his mind that day.  More...

(wapo) Even so, just over half of whites in the new poll called Obama a "risky" choice for the White House, while two-thirds said McCain is a "safe" pick. Forty-three percent of whites said Obama has sufficient experience to serve effectively as president, and about two in 10 worry he would overrepresent the interests of African Americans. Obama will be forced to confront these views as he seeks to broaden his appeal. He leads in the Post-ABC poll by six percentage points among all adults, but among those who are most likely to vote, the contest is a tossup, with McCain at 48 percent and Obama at 47 percent. His campaign advisers hope race may prove a benefit, that heightened enthusiasm among African Americans will make Obama competitive in GOP-leaning states with large black populations.  More...

(lat) Students and fellow educators are rallying behind a fired Jordan High School teacher they say was sacked for encouraging political activism among her students. About 60 students rallied Wednesday at the Watts campus, while a colleague of the fired teacher said he and 15 other instructors planned to resign or transfer to other schools to protest the dismissal of Karen Salazar, a second-year English teacher. The dust-up has gone digital as well. Salazar backers have posted videos on the website YouTube. The postings, which have attracted thousands of hits, intersperse music, outraged protesters and interviews, as well as statements from the outspoken educator.  More...

Bill Moyers: I once asked a reporter back from Vietnam, "Who's telling the truth over there?" "Everyone," he said. "Everyone sees what's happening through the lens of their own experience. " That's how people see Jeremiah Wright. In my conversation with him on this broadcast a week ago and in his dramatic public appearances since, he revealed himself to be far more complex than the sound bites that propelled him onto the public stage. Over 2000 of you have written me about him, and your opinions vary widely.  More...

True or not, the Clinton campaign has been accused of playing the race card. The irony here, of course, is that Bill and Hillary only have themselves to blame for employing the kinds of political tactics now being used against them. As the Barack and Hillary Show extended its tour to such off-off-off Broadway primary states as Indiana and North Carolina (coming soon to Puerto Rico!), it was inevitable that both sides would dust off the "playing the race card" script. Recently, Bill Clinton was asked whether he had played the race card when he compared Barack Obama's South Carolina victory to Jesse Jackson's in 1984 and 1988. "No," he said in one of his typical outbursts of enraged self-pity.  More...

(Washington Times) In an interview last week Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that the United States still has trouble dealing with race because of a national "birth defect" that denied black Americans the opportunities given to whites at the country's very founding. "Black Americans were a founding population," she said. "Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together — Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That's not a very pretty reality of our founding. " As a result, Miss Rice told editors and reporters at The Washington Times, "descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that.  More...

(lat) I am shocked by the commentary on the prominence of race as a theme in the Democratic Party primaries. Shocked not because race is a theme but because so many in the media seem to think that race would not be or should not be mentioned. It is as if we think that not speaking about race is the equivalent of making progress on race issues. The only thing more amusing than the use of a new term, "post-racial," to describe the positive response to Barack Obama's campaign is the lamentation at the loss of "post-raciality. " This entire narrative is a media-concocted fiction.  More...

By Chuck Hobbs Denzel Washington is generating Academy Award buzz for his directorial efforts in “The Great Debaters,” a film that chronicles the success of the Wiley College Debate team in the 1930’s. Wiley was the first Historically Black College to compete, and win, against white institutions. During one of the movies pivotal scenes the debaters, en route to a competition in southern Texas, stumble across a gruesome lynching in progress. The team’s coach, Melvin Tolson, who was played by Washington, frantically places his car into reverse as he and the team barely avoid becoming victims of the macabre spectacle. I was reminded of this scene last week when media reports surfaced that Golf analyst Kelly Tilghman of the Golf Channel subjected Tiger Woods to a racial slur.  More...

(nyt) As the Democratic candidates have moved from courting the overwhelmingly white voters of Iowa and New Hampshire to an expanse of 25 contests facing them in the next few weeks, they confront an electorate that is increasingly Hispanic, in Nevada, California and New York. Although the two candidates aggressively court those voters, who could be vital for Democrats this year and for years to come, the challenge is especially complex for Mr. Obama. It arises as Mrs. Clinton sought to tamp down reaction from Obama supporters to remarks she had made about the Rev.  More...

New Jersey might issue an apology for slavery. But some NJ politicians don't think an apology is needed. This is what Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll, R-Morris, said: "If slavery was the price that a modern American's ancestors had to pay in order to make one an American, one should get down on one's knees every single day and thank the Lord that such price was paid. " "To the extent that America - or New Jersey -ever owed any kind of debt to anyone, that debt was more than repaid through the blood and suffering of 650,000 federal soldiers who died or were wounded during the war provoked by slavery," Carroll said. "No one today need feel the slightest guilt, as no one today participated in the wrong.  More...

(ap) Hate crime incidents in the United States rose last year by nearly 8 percent, the FBI reported Monday, as racial prejudice continued to account for more than half the reported instances. Police across the nation reported 7,722 criminal incidents in 2006 targeting victims or property as a result of bias against a particular race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnic or national origin or physical or mental disability. That was up 7. 8 percent from the 7,163 incidents reported in 2005. Although the noose incidents and beatings among students at Jena, La.  More...

(lat) As the story goes, the East Coast Crips robbed a Florencia 13 drug connection of a large quantity of dope nearly a decade ago. Since then, the tale of how a black street gang ripped off a Latino rival has taken on mythic proportions. But to this day police are uncertain if the fabled heist ever occurred. "You hear so many different variations of this crime," said Terry Burgin, a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department gang detective. "Who knows what really happened? [But] the effects are tremendous.  More...

(nyt) IN the days of blithe racial assumptions, flesh crayons were the color of white people. “Invisible” makeup and nude pantyhose were colored in the hues of Caucasian skin. The decision by manufacturers to ignore whole segments of humanity went unchallenged for decades before the civil rights movement came along and nonwhite consumers started demanding their place on the color wheel. Nowadays the cultural landscape is well populated with actors, musicians, media moguls and candidates for the American presidency drawn from the 30 percent of the American population that is not white. Yet, if there is one area where the lessons of chromatic and racial diversity have gone largely unheeded, it is fashion.  More...

A hangman's noose was found pinned to the door of an African-American professor's door at Teacher's College. The noose was discovered this morning and was reported to the New York City Police Department's Hate Crimes Task Force, members of which are currently investigating the incident. Farrah Khan, a first-year student at TC and a member of the Black Student Network, indicated that the event had rocked the small TC campus. "I had a class at 5 and we talked about it for the whole two hours," Khan said. "The very moment that we say racism is far away, .  More...

(reuters) Queen Latifah, who has a new voice as a jazz singer, is taking blacks to task for not acting sooner against misogynist, violent and vulgar rap lyrics. "It's a little late to say: 'Stop saying nigger,"' she told Reuters in an interview, in which she discussed the firing of radio personality Don Imus for racial comments and African-American protests over an assault case in Louisiana. Asked about her transition from hip-hop star to singer, Hollywood actress and entrepreneur, Latifah said she also wants to be a voice for young blacks. "I've never been a political person, but I do care about what's going on in my world, who's making the decisions for me," she said. "I would like to see young people be involved and active and voice our opinions.  More...

A noose was found hanging inside a Long Island, New York police station. This ought to make people of color feel safe and protected in the town of Hempstead, Long Island. (Newsday). . .  More...

(MMFA) On the August 10 broadcast of Cox Radio Syndication's The Neal Boortz Show, producer Belinda Skelton told host Neal Boortz about a bilingual Parent-Teacher Association meeting she had attended, remarking that she had been unable to tell how many of the families in attendance spoke English. Boortz responded: "[Y]ou can look at the parents and tell, because the ones with sombreros can't speak English. . . .  More...

(Bookman/AJC) A few years ago, after an out-of-town friend snagged tickets to the Masters, we ended up riding the last few miles to the storied Augusta golf course in an RV crammed with half a dozen guys from South Carolina. They were introduced as prominent businessmen in their hometown, and as we inched our way through traffic, I was astonished when they began passing time by telling each other jokes about black people — although "black people" wasn't the term they used — of a crudeness I hadn't heard since childhood. My shock came not at the racism — it's no secret that racism remains a force in this country with very real consequences — but at the casualness with which it was expressed among "just us white guys. " It came as even more of a shock to my friend, on one of his first trips to the South. Because racism is so rarely displayed blatantly these days, its influence usually has to be sensed rather than seen.  More...