Race

Gay marriage and the black vote, polling says views are changing

Posted by Jeff from Los Angeles Times

Don't bet on it. Although ordinary polls report lower levels of support for same-sex marriage among blacks than among whites, views on same-sex marriage are a rapidly moving target that's tough to pin down, even for experts. And a funny thing happened on the way to the ballot box in the last presidential election. When constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage were on 11 state ballots in November 2004, blacks in Arkansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Ohio and Oklahoma were at least one percentage point less likely than whites to vote for them, according to CNN exit polls. Only in Georgia were blacks slightly more likely to vote for the amendment

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Juvenile Asylum

Posted by Shemuses

Confronting racial profiling in schools. Metal detectors and security officers have become fixtures in public schools across the nation. At many of these schools, where students are predominately Black and Brown, "security" has become a code word for "racial profiling." One group of New York City high school students decided to take their schools security policies to task.

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Obama's Sidekcik pick

Posted by Shemuses

In choosing your No. 2, just do you. My advice to Obama, short of recommending media mogul Russell Simmons as his running mate (folks are

ready), is to at least take a page, literally, out of Simmons' book and,

Pick who

want. Pick someone serious who'll help you win, but also pick someone who you want to govern with. President Bush let himself get sandbagged with Vice President Cheney, and you see how well that worked out for him.

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Can Black Journalists Be Trusted to Cover Obama?

Posted by Shemuses

Please. Groupies with press passes come in all colors. Black journalists are being taken to task by white journalists who suggest that to remain journalistically chaste they must not show one shred of pride or enthusiasm in light of Barack Obama's history-making presidential bid, lest our precious "objectivity" be called into question.

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Judge removed from 'Jena Six' trials

Posted by Jeff from MSNBC

Judge J.P. Mauffray Jr. had acknowledged calling the teens "trouble makers" and "a violent bunch" but insisted he could be impartial. Judge Thomas M. Yeager, who was asked by defense attorneys to review the case, found there was an appearance of impropriety and recused Mauffray.

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Congress's Apology for Slavery Is a Good Thing—It's Just Not Enough

Posted by Shemuses

The House of Representative's vote to apologize for the horror of slavery was an easy call. Several states have done their mea culpas on slavery. The resolutions the states and Congress passed were mild, innocuous, and ultimately toothless. In truth that's all they were supposed to be. But the House resolution was still important. It was tacit acknowledgement of something that the slavery apology opponents vehemently deny and that is that slavery was not just the evil doings of greedy Southern planters.

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States Fail to Offer Voter Registration to Millions of Low-Income Voters

Posted by Shemuses from Alternet

Another big election year and once again low-income voters are on the sidelines. Millions of low-income and minority voters are being denied opportunities to register to vote by state agencies that are violating a federal voting law, according to members of Congress and voting rights groups. The ongoing failure has led to a nearly 80 percent drop-off in registering low-income applicants at state social services agencies over a decade, according to a recent report by the non-partisan voter advocacy research groups Project Vote and Demos.

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