Due to “credible death and kidnapping threats”, T-Pain has cancelled a concert in Guyana for Mashramani, the festival that marks the anniversary of Guyana’s independence from Great Britain. Last years, celebration was soured by a killing spree perpetrated by a heavily armed gang led by man known as “Fine Man”. Because the 23 victims were mainly of East Indian descent, the massacre was a powder keg issue for the tiny South American nation. With a population of 44% East Indian and 30% African ancestries, Guyana tends to be socially and politically divided along ethnic identity lines. [more inside]
posted by Stu-Pendous on Feb 24, 2009 - 12 comments

An editorial cartoon in the New York Post gets reactions from around the world about its possible racial depictions. [more inside]
posted by happyroach on Feb 19, 2009 - 301 comments

The end of white America is a cultural and demographic inevitability. "At the moment, we can call this the triumph of multiculturalism, or post-racialism. But just as whiteness has no inherent meaning—it is a vessel we fill with our hopes and anxieties—these terms may prove equally empty in the long run. Does being post-racial mean that we are past race completely, or merely that race is no longer essential to how we identify ourselves?"
posted by plexi on Jan 16, 2009 - 69 comments

NYT: A new generation of black elected officials are wooing white voters and winning local elections in predominantly white districts across the country.
posted by chuckdarwin on Oct 14, 2008 - 29 comments

Bill Moyers interviews the Reverend Jeremiah Wright in his first broadcast interview with a journalist since he became embroiled in a controversy for his remarks and his relationship with Barack Obama [more inside]
posted by homunculus on Apr 28, 2008 - 159 comments

Obama's Gettysburg Address. Today we saw and heard a preview of our brightest possible American future in Senator Barack Obama's glorious speech. This, then, is what it means to be presidential. To be moral. To have a real center. To speak honestly, from the heart, for the benefit of all. If there was any doubt about what we have missed in the anti-intellectual, ruthlessly incurious Bush years, and even the slippery Clinton ones (the years of "what is is"), those doubts were laid to rest by Barack Obama's magisterial speech today. A speech in which he distanced himself from a flawed father figure, Reverend Wright, and did so with almost Shakespearian dignity and honor. One of the most important speeches on race in decades if not longer. (text) [more inside]
posted by caddis on Mar 18, 2008 - 1126 comments

Politics of Hate: What's happening to the city of Mumbai
posted by hadjiboy on Feb 13, 2008 - 14 comments

'Race' graphically illustrated - "most Europeans" vs. Ashkenazim (previously; see also IQ & Gladwell, viz. ;) [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Jan 23, 2008 - 101 comments

When he's not writing for The Adventures of Chico and Guapo or MadTV, Colin Quashie is creating his own brand of political art (with some help from elementary school kids on that last one). He has even put together a free coloring book to help you sort out the civil rights movement. What does it all mean? He'll tell you.
posted by 1f2frfbf on Jul 3, 2007 - 2 comments

It's a sticky subject. Romney apologized for his handling of it. Tony Snow felt it was "nice and zippy." John Kerry seems to have embraced it without any problems. Now John McCain latches onto it. Can he free himself?
posted by Kirth Gerson on Mar 16, 2007 - 55 comments

Patricia Todd won a tight Democratic party runoff in District 54 in Alabama. Patricia Todd is also gay and would be the first gay representative in Alabama's history. Gaynell Hendricks doesn't understand why she lost, but maybe it has to do with the race baiting . Hendricks' mother-in-law contests the election for numerous reasons including "illegal votes were given to Todd" and said that "I want this controversy settled.This is happening like when Bush and Gore were running for president. I don't like it." Unsurprisingly, "Hendricks said she is pleased that someone challenged the results. " Weeks go by and the results don't get certified. A five member committee is appointed and bickers. Eventually the committee refrerences an old by law that has apparently not been enforced since 1988 to disqualify Todd. Although it does not seem quite over, it should be by tommorrow. Interestingly enough, Todd said she believes the challenge has nothing to do with the fact she is gay, but is about the fact that she is white and won in a majority black district.
posted by dig_duggler on Aug 25, 2006 - 38 comments

"Let's give a welcome to Macaca here."
posted by EarBucket on Aug 14, 2006 - 72 comments

Fancy Ford is the most elegant-looking political smear site you've ever seen. But is there a racial message?
posted by barjo on Mar 10, 2006 - 47 comments

Why do we always seem to expect the worst from some people? By now, it's common knowledge that media reports of widespread looting, violence and sexual assault in the wake of Katrina's strike on New Orleans were grossly exaggerated, but why? Some might attribute such distortions to unconscious bias, offering up some hope of alleviating racial tension by bringing unexamined racial biases to light; still others see the problem of racial tension as an intractable one, leading inevitably to an all-out clash of cultures--even finding "evidence" of the inevitably of such a conflict in the unlikeliest of places. Still others seem especially eager to bring all these tensions to a head. What's really going on these days? Is racial tension ultimately a political problem or, as some suggest, a psychological one?
posted by all-seeing eye dog on Oct 21, 2005 - 35 comments

The Rise and Fall of the Black Voter is a remarkable sequence of maps graphically describing the realignment of voting patterns in the U.S. during the past century (read this for a bit more context). It is an excellent companion to the purple maps of the most recent election, and a nice antidote to simplistic comparisons of pre-Civil War and recent electoral college maps. Republicans can bask in the glow of their successful "Southern Strategy," while Democrats can take heart that change, while often slow, is still possible.
posted by googly on Dec 15, 2004 - 7 comments

Is the GOP tampering with Florida elections? The New York Times reports that State police officers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando and interrogated them as part of an odd "investigation" that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly volunteers and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in November. Also, see here and here. Why do we even put up with this?
posted by black8 on Aug 16, 2004 - 61 comments

Bush camp solicits race of Star staffer. President Bush's re-election campaign insisted on knowing the race of an Arizona Daily Star journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney.
The jounalist's name was Mamta Popat. She sure sounds like a terrorist.
posted by JeffK on Jul 31, 2004 - 30 comments

I feel like I have stepped through the looking glass.... first, we have the truly surprising but welcome sight of Michael Howard celebrating cultural diversity in Britain, then we have David Goodhart, editor of Prospect, apparently a magazine of the left, suggesting that perhaps we have quite enough immigrants in the UK for the moment, thank you. Goodhart's article is very provocative and very important, it's a debate that needs to be had and which has most certainly and entertainingly been joined by Trevor Phillips. I love a schism!
posted by Fat Buddha on Feb 24, 2004 - 11 comments

Black-Jew Rift Widens After Southern Primaries WASHINGTON — Participants in this month's Congressional Black Caucus conference say the defeat of two black House members in bitter primaries not only suggests a widening rift with Jewish Democrats, but trouble within the Democratic Party itself. I have long considered the Democrats in trouble: one of their charms. A Black loses to another Black and it is the fault of the Jews? Reparations? Assuming there had been a strong lobby at work to get the Jewish vote to come out against these candidates, is that un-American? Don't we vote for those we feel best serve our interests? Odd that he Protocols of Zion not mentioned.
posted by Postroad on Sep 18, 2002 - 26 comments

PBS's Televangelist: "Moyers's difficulty conversing with people on the right seems to have impaired his ability to report their opinions fairly, particularly on issues of race. "The right gets away with blaming liberals for their efforts to help the poor, but what the right is really objecting to is the fact that the poor are primarily black," he told Alterman. "The man who sits in the White House today [George H.W. Bush] opposed the Civil Rights Act. So did Ronald Reagan. This crowd is really fighting a retroactive civil rights war to prevent the people they dislike because of their color from achieving success in American life."" (via medianews)
posted by owillis on Feb 18, 2002 - 43 comments

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice -- concert pianist, figure skater, Stanford University Provost, speaker of 4 languages -- should be the poster child for Black achievement in the 21st Century. So why is she largely ignored, if not outright scorned, by the Black community? Could it be because she's a Republican?

Who's stirring up this pot? Some conservative like O'Reilly, Limbaugh, North? Nope, just a liberal Black female newspaper columnist.
posted by pardonyou? on Dec 17, 2001 - 46 comments

Shudder... At least Helms tries to pretend he's offended... Warning: Quicktime file, may put you off your feed.
posted by GriffX on Sep 6, 2001 - 15 comments

Amexica. So, living in two hispanic-dominated regions (Los Angeles, South Florida), I've seen the growth of the latino population create one of the oddest political coalitions ever. Ultra-conservatives (mostly white) want to tighten the borders because they see their "way of life" disappearing or mixing linguistically with Spanish. Blacks are threatened by dropping to #3 in the country's racial make-up, and see whatever political power they've gained begin to evaporate in a numbers game. In LA's recent mayoral race, this coalition became the deciding factor in defeating the latino candidate.
posted by owillis on Jun 18, 2001 - 20 comments

Hello, Peril. The so-called model minority inspire an amazing amount of mistrust, according to a survey of US residents. Featuring the revelation that one third of those polled "said Chinese Americans are more loyal to China than to the United States. "
posted by anildash on Apr 25, 2001 - 56 comments

Here's your reparations money, now shut up! Another POV in the slavery reparations debate: From the conservative National Review, an argument that paying off black Americans would be worth it "if they could no longer play the race card."
posted by darren on Mar 20, 2001 - 24 comments

Welcome back, state's rights. As if Dubya's comments following his "ethnic" Cabinet appointments wasn't enough retrograde logic -- roughly: if blacks and hispanics (would only?) work hard and make the right choices in life -- he's now using language that has been used to mask agendas based on race from before the Civil War through the fight against integration. And it looks like that fight ain't over, if you read "states rights" in today's context to mean the right to spend public funds on getting (primarily) white kids out of (primarily) black schools.
posted by subpixel on Jan 6, 2001 - 13 comments

perfect headline: Chad Is a Country in Africa Racism—Florida's Real Scandal
posted by palegirl on Nov 21, 2000 - 1 comment