LZ Granderson
Special to CNN

Sarah Palin's book tour came through my city the other day and I scooted over to the mall, looking to get an autograph and a handshake.

Unfortunately, I got neither.

I wasn't in line at 5 a.m., so I wasn't one of the 1,000 or so people who obtained the special wristband necessary to gain access to the rogue one.

However, I did get a lot of strange looks from the line, which I guess was to be expected. After all, I'm a black man with dreadlocks and, judging by the racial makeup of most of the cities Palin has scheduled for her tour, it doesn't seem I'm her target audience.

I'm not suggesting that she should avoid going to places like Noblesville, Indiana, or Washington, Pennsylvania, both with overwhelmingly white populations. It just seems that in going to few diversely populated cities, she's purposefully steering clear of minorities. I mean, what author with a $5 million book deal avoids promoting books in large cities?

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Cairo University students wearing niqab stand outside a university dormitory on Oct. 7

Octavia Nasr | BIO
AC360° Contributor
CNN Senior Editor, Mideast Affairs

The Arab Middle East teaches minorities some tough life lessons and shapes them in ways that might surprise you. While the effect of a conservative patriarchal society is expected to keep people under the thumb of tradition, culture and tribal and religious beliefs - sometimes too much oppression and control yields opposite results.

Having lived in several parts of the Middle East as a child, I learned that a woman doesn’t exist except as someone’s daughter, sister, wife or mother. Her opinion is not required, her emotions don’t count and she has no rights whatsoever – except those granted to her by a male.

With a few recent exceptions, an Arab woman’s testimony is not accepted in court. Most Arab women can’t travel outside their countries without permission from a male guardian, and most Arab women still can’t give nationality to their children. In Saudi Arabia women are not even allowed to drive cars. A popular Arabic saying describes it best: a good woman “has a mouth that eats but not one that speaks.”

The Arab Middle East taught me that sexual expression is exclusive to men. Men can have pre-marital sex, and when they’re married, their extra-marital affairs are ignored, justified or blamed on the wives. Their bodies are their own to do with them what they want. A woman’s body, however, represents her family’s honor. So, girls and women are expected to cover their bodies and repress their sexual feelings to protect the honor of the family.

This is such a deeply-rooted belief that, to this day, girls and women are killed by fathers, brothers or cousins at the suspicion of sexual activity. Even if a girl or woman is the victim of rape or assault, she can be killed under the pretext of “cleansing the family’s honor.” The practice known as “Honor Killing” is still common among all religions in the Middle East; it is even justified under the law and carries no penalty.

As someone who grew up and spent my early adulthood in the Middle East, I also learned that men run the show and they run it for life. Imagine that with the exception of a few, all Arab leaders haven’t changed since I was a child; and those who died were replaced by their sons. So far, the customary behavior has been such that if you wanted change, you had to ask men for their permission, their blessing, their support, their approval, their orders, and their actions to bring that change.

The women in my family were very active in the women’s rights movement of the 60s, 70s and 80s. Men listened to them, gave them a forum to express their desire to become equal through conferences, speeches and occasional articles in the media. They even gave them some rights – like the right to vote in some countries and the right to run for office in others. But, women’s rights were always controlled by men’s approval and that didn’t go far at all. As a matter of fact, a quick look at the Arab Middle East shows you that with very few exceptions it remains a region controlled by the ruling few who are unwilling to relinquish power. They resist change as if it were a contagious disease that will lead to their demise if they ever catch it.

Enter the age of the computer and the Internet, the age of blogging and connecting with the world. The only age that will allow a Saudi female cartoonist to draw pictures depicting how a woman feels when her husband takes on a second or third wife. It simply rips her heart out she draws.

A Saudi female cartoonist's rendition of how a woman feels when her husband takes on a second or third wife.

Islam accepts polygamy and blesses it with a caveat which men enthusiastic about the practice tend to ignore. You can take multiple wives, but “if you want to be fair, marry only one,” the holy Muslim book guides. While not many in Saudi Arabia might care about how Hana Hajjar feels, a whole world outside the kingdom, is paying attention, supporting and perhaps even lending a hand.

The online traffic we witnessed in the aftermath of Iran’s contested elections and the outpour of support Iranian reformists received through social media are perfect examples of the effect of international support on local activism. In the case of Iran, it energized and helped spread the message to far reaching corners of the world.

Other stories that have captured the world’s attention are bloggers jailed in Egypt and Saudi Arabia for speaking up against the Status Quo in their countries and demanding social justice and political reform. We are learning about what’s going on inside the most conservative and most police-controlled countries in the region through bloggers who are not allowing the intimidation of prison, harassment or abuse to silence them.

It is obvious now there is a growing number of Arabs, men and women, who not only want change but they are willing to get to that change on their own. They grew tired of demanding it and not receiving anything in return, so they made the decision to truly become the change and live it in practice.

Now, you have bloggers like Wael Abbas in Egypt who openly criticizes President Hosni Mubarak’s policies and screams out slurs against his country’s secret police that detains him for hours and confiscates his laptop without any explanation or apology whatsoever.

You also have the gay and lesbian Middle Eastern community publishing their online magazine which deals with issues they find important. They discuss sexual orientation out in the open and provide a voice and an outlet they wouldn’t have even dreamed of a few years ago. Their headlines read, “Who we sleep with is nobody’s business” and “Homophobia and Paranoia: Words that Ryhme.”

The Lebanese Association of Women Researchers ‘Bahithat’ just organized what is dubbed a cornerstone of Arab Feminism through a conference at the American University of Beirut. Women from all over the Middle East - including Iraq and Iran - were there promoting the idea that “change will have to be imposed not demanded anymore” says Lebanese Feminist Zeina Zaatari, one of the most vocal voices at the conference.

The Feminist Collective promoted the event online through social networking sites such as Twitter. They drew the world’s attention to hear the voices of powerful women who gave themselves the right instead of waiting for officials to give them permission to speak or express themselves. Zaatari captured the limelight as she linked a woman’s equality with a woman’s sexual freedom and sexual expression. “A woman can’t be free if she doesn’t own her body and has full control of it and if she doesn’t express her sexuality,” she told me in a phone interview from Beirut.

The December 2008 Issue of Jasad.

Another example of women taking matters into their own hands is a quarterly magazine called ‘Jasad’ which means ‘Body’ in Arabic. It’s a racy magazine that was launched by a woman in Lebanon at the end of 2008 dealing with the female body and its deepest sexual desires. ‘Jasad’ is banned and its website is blocked from many Arab countries.

“This doesn’t stop subscriptions from being delivered by courier mail,” founder and editor-in-chief Joumana Haddad told me as she was busily preparing the fifth issue. She says the magazine is doing well despite the fact that “no one dares to advertize” in it. She talks about threats she and her editors receive on a regular basis and unending harassment since they all use their real names. She says it is the support she receives from within the Middle East and outside that keeps her going and that “nothing will stop ‘Jasad’ from being published.”

Several new lines are being drawn in the Middle East’s desert sand simultaneously.... If they continue to be drawn at this rate longer and thicker, it’s hard to foresee any governments, censors or jails being able to stop them.

New citizens take the oath of citizenship during ceremonies in Montebello, California, earlier this year.

Rudy Ruiz
Special to CNN

One of the greatest challenges for minorities in any democracy is that their priorities often differ with those of the majority.

Consequently, even if a minority group does not experience outright tyranny, it can suffer tragic neglect. That's the lingering problem with immigration reform.

Latino leaders have long called for comprehensive immigration reform. During the presidential campaign, it finally seemed destined for reality as candidates sought the crucial Latino vote.

But today, where's immigration reform on the list of priorities?

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Why didn't the conservatives support professor Gates?

Al Vivian
Special to CNN

As an independent moderate, it never ceases to amaze me how political loyalists contradict themselves and flip-flop on social issues. Both parties regularly engage in this practice; but rarely are they challenged or called out for it.

Let's look at the most recent case, the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. It has been more than three weeks since this incident, which was the first story big enough to knock Michael Jackson's death out of the headlines, while simultaneously sidelining President Obama's health care agenda; all resulting in massive media coverage and even a "Beer Summit."

But within all that time and coverage, there is still one question that is yet to be asked: Why didn't the conservatives support professor Gates?

As practically every conservative on the Judiciary Committee so passionately spoke of at length during the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings, legal matters should be decided on the facts alone and not on personal opinions or empathy.

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President Obama, Sgt. Crowley and Professor Gates will meet this evening at the White House.

Greg Ridgeway and Nelson Lim
RAND Corporation

President Obama called the arrest of his friend Professor Henry Gates a “teachable moment.” This is a moment to learn the facts of race and policing these days. The president put it this way: “There is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact.”

Racial profiling has indeed been an ugly reality for many years. But our research in several large cities finds little evidence that it continues to be a major problem.

Police departments have made tremendous progress in both policy and practice of racial profiling. Numerous states and departments have banned it, and racial profiling prevention training is commonplace. Sgt. James Crowley, the officer who arrested Gates, has taught such a class at the local police academy for five years.

It’s true that minorities continue to be stopped disproportionately to their representation in the population. But this information says nothing about whether police are racial profiling.  A key reason for this disparity is exposure to police.

Police regularly allocate their officers based on a neighborhood’s 911 call volume. Disproportionate numbers of African Americans and Latinos live in highly segregated areas with high crime rates. As a result, they have much greater exposure to police officers than whites who live in other parts of the city. Furthermore, even though drug use is nearly equal across races, research indicates that black drug users and sellers are likelier to be involved in frequent, public drug transactions that increase the risk of police noticing them.

To address the stop disparity question more directly, RAND researchers have conducted a series of studies in Oakland, California and Cincinnati – two cities with histories of racial tension. We found that regardless of whether officers could identify the race of the drivers in advance, the percentage of black drivers stopped remained the same. That is, even in circumstances when race couldn’t be a factor in officers’ stop decisions, black drivers were still stopped at the same rate.

Such findings counter the longstanding belief that merely “driving while black” is an invitation to police harassment. And so many commentators on the Gates arrest have assumed that race played a role in the incident.  Norm Stamper, retired police chief of the Seattle Police Department, said, “My personal belief is that had Professor Gates been white, the outcome would have been different … maybe even a couple of chuckles ... it ended up becoming a huge national issue.”

It’s impossible to say whether a white Gates would have been arrested. But by examining a large number of police stops, we can draw some conclusions.

We looked at 500,000 stops that New York Police Department officers made in 2006 and found that 4 percent of black pedestrians who were stopped were arrested.  For each black pedestrian, we found white pedestrians stopped at about the same location, at about the same time of day, and suspected of the same crime.  They were arrested at the same rate: 4 percent.

The pattern holds true for other outcomes: 45 percent of black pedestrians were frisked. Similar white pedestrians were frisked 42 percent of the time. Officers used physical force against 21 percent of black pedestrians and 20 percent of white pedestrians.

We completed similar analyses in Cincinnati from 2003 to 2007.  Same answer.  When we compare black drivers to white drivers and make sure that they are similar on when, where, and why the stops took place, we find no differences in the stop outcomes.

While we have largely moved on from the profiling of the 1990s, the kind that resulted in lengthy court oversight in New Jersey and Maryland, our research showed that racial profiling by a few problem officers in certain neighborhoods may still persist.

In New York and Cincinnati, we found a few officers with inexplicable patterns of stopping a large number of black residents. And black pedestrians stopped on Staten Island in 2006 were more likely to be searched, arrested, or have physical force used against them. But these findings are the exception rather than the rule.

The Gates arrest rekindles painful memories of police brutality, of the tragic cases of Sean Bell, Timmy Thomas, and Rodney King. But these do not negate the progress that has been made to eradicate racial profiling – even if the improvement has not been recognized by the public, especially black and Latinos, a sizable majority of whom, in a 2004 Gallup poll, believed racial profiling is widespread.

When President Obama meets with Professor Gates and Officer Crowley this evening, he could use this “teachable moment” to communicate the progress that has been made toward ending racial bias in American policing. We need the perception to catch up with the reality that racial profiling is becoming – and must be made - a thing of the past.

Editor's Note: Greg Ridgeway is director of the Center on Quality Policing and Nelson Lim is a Senior Demographer at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decision-making through research and analysis.

Gloria Borger
CNN Senior Political Analyst

After initially waiting a few nanoseconds to call Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor a racist - not to mention advising that she just ought to withdraw from consideration - Newt Gingrich has had a sudden change of heart.

Or at least vocabulary.

In the conservative magazine Human Events, he writes on Wednesday: "My initial reaction was strong and direct - perhaps too strong and too direct. ... Since then, some who want to have an open and honest consideration of Judge Sotomayor's fitness to serve on the nation's highest court have been critical of my word choice. ... The word 'racist' should not have been applied to Judge Sotomayor as a person, even if her words themselves are unacceptable."

An apology from Newt? And one that contains a string of thoughts too long to Twitter? How can that be?

It seems as if poor Gingrich found himself the target of his own Republican Party. Some of the more serious folks in the Senate had been trying to figure out what kind of a jurist Sotomayor might be, when Newt and Rush Limbaugh decided to morph into Thelma and Louise.

Their favorite topic? Sotomayor's now infamous statement that, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Foolish, yes. Self-serving, sure.

But Gingrich and Co. just couldn't leave it at that. Personal name-calling is just so much more fun - and attention-getting. So she became a racist (even a reverse racist), in their words.

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Program Note: Tune in tonight to hear more about the election on AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

James Young poses with one of his young supporters after winning this week's election.

Ed Lavandera
CNN Correspondent

James Young still remembers the Ku Klux Klan tormenting his neighborhood. He can still see his father holding a gun on the living room couch ready to shoot anyone who threatened his family.

Nothing about Young's childhood ever made him think he could be the mayor of Philadelphia, Mississippi, the town best known for the killings of three civil rights workers in 1964.

That's the way it was for black kids growing up in this crucible of racial hostility - big dreams were often squelched. Sitting on a sprawling Southern front porch this week, Young broke down in tears about what it means to be elected the town's first black mayor.

"When you've been treated the way we've been treated," he told CNN, choking up and then pausing to wipe the tears from his face.

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Mark Silva
The Los Angeles Times

There is but one woman on the nine-member Supreme Court, in a nation where women outnumber men at polling places; one black justice, in a nation that shed legalized racial discrimination only decades ago; and there never has been a Hispanic on the high court, in a nation whose fastest growing minority population is Latino.

Yet, with President Obama weighing his first appointment for the high court and promising to pick a nominee with "diversity of experience," Americans apparently are in no rush to even the score for women or minorities on the court.

"There is simply no large groundswell," reports Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, in a survey released this morning by the independent polling institute.

Nearly two-thirds - 64% - of Americans surveyed say it "doesn't matter" to them if the president appoints a woman, according to the results of a Gallup poll conducted last week.

Slightly more of those surveyed - 68% - said it doesn't matter whether Obama names a Hispanic justice. And even more - 74% - said it doesn't matter whether the first African American president appoints a black justice.

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Roland S. Martin
CNN Contributor

"I'll kill all y'all."

Imagine looking at the man whose DNA you carry standing in your home, telling you those chilling words, as he wields a shotgun.

The frightening image is a scary thought. But according to former Major League Baseball star Darryl Strawberry, it was an actual scene, one that begins his book, "Straw: Finding My Way."

I vividly remember the towering home runs hit by the former star, who played for four big league teams, including the New York Mets and Yankees - and of course, the many times he was in the news for failing drug tests, beating wives, getting cancer twice, going to prison. He was a man fighting enormous demons.

Yet as I read the book, there is one consistent theme that runs throughout and that sheds a spotlight on a figure that continues to plague neighborhoods all across the country: the missing-in-action father.

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Tony Dokoupil
Newsweek.com

Several pairs of eyes follow the girl as she pedals around the playground in an affluent suburb of Baltimore. But it isn't the redheaded fourth grader who seems to have moms and dads of the jungle gym nervous on this recent Saturday morning. It's the African-American man—six feet tall, bearded and wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt—watching the girl's every move. Approaching from behind, he grabs the back of her bicycle seat as she wobbles to a stop. "Nice riding," he says, as the fair-skinned girl turns to him, beaming. "Thanks, Daddy," she replies. The onlookers are clearly flummoxed.

As a black father and adopted white daughter, Mark Riding and Katie O'Dea-Smith are a sight at best surprising, and at worst so perplexing that people feel compelled to respond. Like the time at a Pocono Mountains flea market when Riding scolded Katie, attracting so many sharp glares that he and his wife, Terri, 37, and also African-American, thought "we might be lynched." And the time when well-intentioned shoppers followed Mark and Katie out of the mall to make sure she wasn't being kidnapped. Or when would-be heroes come up to Katie in the cereal aisle and ask, "Are you OK?"—even though Terri is standing right there.

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John Hope Franklin, a revered historian and scholar on issues of race and the South, has died.

Dr. John White
University of Hull, England

Professor John Hope Franklin, the distinguished African-American historian who died Wednesday in Durham, North Carolina, at the grand old age of 94, will be remembered by his friends, former students and colleagues with respect, admiration and, above all, affection. A prolific scholar of Southern and African-American history, John Hope Franklin was also engaged in the struggle for civil rights and racial harmony. He marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., and gave advice to the NAACP in the historic Brown versus Board of Education school desegregation decision.

As a young, white, British historian with a special interest in Southern history, I first met John Hope in England over 30 years ago. I came to regard him as a mentor and friend, and found his company exhilarating. Whether discoursing on his confrontations with racism (inside and outside the historical profession), his world tours, or his beloved orchids, John Hope (as he was known to his friends) was unfailingly entertaining.

A generous and attentive host at his home in Durham, he wore his learning lightly, but gracefully. A walk around the Duke campus in his company was regularly interrupted by well-wishers anxious to demonstrate their high regard for him. In print and in conversation, John Hope would recall the ugly incidents of racial discrimination he had encountered from childhood onwards – but often with a humorous coda. One example is the encounter he had with a white woman in his club in Washington, D.C., on the evening before he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton. The "lady" in question asked him to get her coat from the cloakroom. A man in his hotel also handed him a set of car keys and told John Hope to collect his car. He later recounted: "I patiently explained to him that I was a guest in the hotel, and I had no idea where his automobile was. And, in any case, I was retired."

On one occasion, I went with him to a supermarket in Durham and when he reached the check-out desk, loaded with packages, offered to help carry them. He responded (loudly): "All right, boy!" There was much head-scratching and consternation among his fellow shoppers; I was convulsed with laughter.

When I showed him an essay I'd recently published about his academic career, and asked (timidly) what he thought of it, he said:"Can't nobody talk to me now, after what you wrote!" This from a man with over 130 honorary degrees.

John Hope Franklin was, among many other things, the conscience of America. I am privileged to have known and enjoyed the warm friendship of this truly great man.

Editor's Note: Dr John White is Reader Emeritus in American History at the University of Hull, England.

CNN's Tom Foreman reports on how the racial economic gap is widening during the recession.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

“If I were an aging white person,” Ron Crouch begins provocatively, “I’d want to find some young black and Hispanic families and ask them how they’re doing because those young Hispanics and blacks will be taking my butt down the road” as they become the taxpayers and leaders of an increasingly multi-cultural America.

Age 62, Crouch is an aging white person and the road he’s talking about is his future and that of the 78 million baby boomers.

Crouch, director of the Kentucky State Data Center at the University of Louisville, travels the country speaking on trends in the American population. He fires machine-gun like bursts of population data as he talks about the years ahead. “The middle-aging, not the aging, of our population is now taking place. The aging of our population is a decade or more off,” says Crouch, explaining how elderly living longer, more than birth rates, will fuel growth in years ago come.

The white population is aging and will decline as a percentage of the population. Projections are that by 2023 there will be no racial majority among those 18-years-old and younger and that by 2042 there will be no racial majority in the country. The Latino population is increasing significantly (much faster than African-Americans), with a large percentage of young. At 15 percent, Latinos today are the largest minority group. By 2040, one of every four Americans likely will have Latino roots on their family tree.

Estimates vary, but over time more workers will leave the workforce than there will be new workers to replace them. That means fewer workers paying fewer taxes to support everything from public services to Social Security. “We need those young Hispanic workers down the road to take care of an older white population,” Crouch says.

"It's in the self-interest of the older generation to have immigrants here," Dowell Myers, an urban planning and demography professor at the University of Southern California, told the Los Angeles Times last year. "Even if you don’t like it, you have to ask the question: Who's going to fill your jobs, buy your homes and pay the taxes for old-age support programs?" Myers said then.

Now, Myers writes, boomers forced by the slumping economy to work extra years “will soften the blow of the anticipated baby boomer retirements, had they all abandoned the labor force on schedule. It also buys us a little more time to get the next generation ready to buy the boomers' homes. It is not so much newly-arrived immigrants who we will count on for help as it is the children of immigrants who are here today.”

Marta Tienda, a professor of both demographics and of sociology/public affairs at Princeton University, agrees that “the youthful Hispanic population represents a potential demographic dividend not available to other industrialized countries that are experiencing population decline,” but cautions, “Thus, immigrant labor can help to support the costs of an aging population, but their potential contributions depend on earnings capacity, which in turn depends on educational investments.”

Despite gains in the past 20 years, Latinos continue to lag behind whites in math and reading and trail in the rates at which they attend college.

Luis Lopez knows the struggle. He entered the U.S. illegally at age 15 with his family (later becoming citizens in an amnesty program). Teachers at Benjamin Franklin High School in Highland Park, Calif., saw promise and propelled him further. Lopez graduated from college and worked a series of jobs in the Los Angeles public schools. Four years ago, he came home to Ben Franklin, whose 2,700 students are 91 percent Latino. As principal he has guided the school to improved academic performance.

Lopez agrees with Crouch. “A white person should find out how these young, Hispanic kids are thinking but not so that he/she can react or defend him/herself from them. They need to know about these kids because one way or the other they will grow up to be part of our country, culture, and every day life. It is imperative that not only do we know what they are thinking but that their thinking is guided, and supported so that they are not only full members but positively contributing members of our country,” he says.

Carmen Van Kerckhove
President, New Demographic

“Slumdog Millionare” won eight Oscars on Sunday night, including Best Picture, in addition to the four Golden Globes it won earlier this year. Its commercial success and critical success contradicts the long-held conventional wisdom about what does and doesn’t sell at the box office.

So, will the success of this film - a story about an orphan growing up in the slums of Mumbai - translate in Hollywood to an era of increased diversity of characters on the big screen? If the past is prologue, it’s probably best not to hold our breath.

The powers-that-be in Hollywood have historically presumed that people of color will happily flock to watch movies featuring white characters, but that "mainstream" - read “white” - audiences won't relate to stories about people of color.

Until Sunday, making films like “Slumdog Millionaire” has seemed to make very little sense financially.

Actor Will Smith offered a rare glimpse into the American world of casting a few years ago. While promoting the romantic comedy “Hitch,” he told The Birmingham Post, that the decision to cast Latina actress Eva Mendes as his love interest was a deliberate racial calculation on behalf of the studio:

"There's sort of an accepted myth that if you have two black actors, a male and a female, in the lead of a romantic comedy, people around the world don't want to see it,” Smith told the British newspaper. “We spend $50-something million making this movie and the studio would think that was tough on their investment. So, the idea of a black actor and a white actress comes up - that'll work around the world, but it's a problem in the U.S."

So, Mendes was the studio’s Goldilocks choice: not too black, not too white - just right.

Even when Hollywood adapts stories in which the original characters are people of color, its producers have a tendency to “white”-wash the characters to make them appeal to the white demographic.

Perhaps the most egregious example of this phenomenon is the film 21. Based on the non-fiction book Bringing Down the House, this was a true story about a blackjack team from MIT that bilked casinos of millions of dollars. The actual team was led by Asian-American students, but the film turned almost all of the students into white characters, leading to criticism from the book's author.

“Slumdog” has grossed nearly $100 million at the box office so far, suggesting that "mainstream" audiences are willing to spend money watching stories about non-white people. The film’s commercial success suggests that Hollywood’s conventional wisdom has been wrong, and that the elements of good storytelling truly are universal.

Reporter's Note: I am writing a letter a day to the White House. The President asked for advice, and I’m helping.

Tom Foreman | Bio
AC360° Correspondent

Dear Mr. President,

I have been surprised at the staying power of the debates that kicked up this week over race. I don’t know why. Certainly I’ve seen racial issues ignite public fury endless times in my career, but I must say it still often catches me off guard.

Between Attorney General Eric Holder’s comments about us all being cowards for not grappling with racial inequalities, and the goofy cartoon about the chimp in that New York newspaper, it seems as if so many people are upset.

I don’t pretend to know all the rights and wrongs of these things. I know that many people have many different opinions, and we’re a long way from any unanimous assessment of where we stand on the issue of equality. I know political leaders of all races, and certainly too many of us in the media, spend a lot of time fanning the flames of racial animus even when we claim we want just the opposite.

So let me just tell you a story for this Sunday. A long time ago when I was a young reporter, I covered City Hall. And it seemed like every other week during the city council meeting the mayor, a white guy; and a prominent councilman, who was black, would square off and start yelling at each other. The issues varied: Police patrols, road repairs, parade permits, liquor licenses. Frankly it didn’t matter. For the longest time I thought these guys hated each other. Then, gradually, it dawned on me that they had actually each built their political kingdoms on the other’s back.

The subtext of every fight was a clear message to voters. From the white man: White folks, you better keep me in power, or the blacks will overrun the town. From the black man: Black folks, you better keep re-electing me, or the whites will crush you.

I came to believe that racism was a cornerstone of their political power, and neither one of them really wanted it to go away. I know that must sound terribly cynical and I hope I was wrong. But all these years later, I still think it was true.

The struggle for a decent, fair, color-blind society is a long and difficult one, and I don’t know if it is something we’ll ever achieve. Probably not. But what is most disheartening is that realization from long ago, that we’ve got plenty of people, black and white, who don’t really want it; indeed, whose power and sense of place flows from keeping people of all races afraid and at each others’ throats.

Sorry for such a downer of a letter. But you know, as much as I want to help with this advice business, it can’t just be on the good days.

Call when you can. As you might guess, I’d love to talk.

Regards,

Tom

For more of the Foreman Letters, click here.

Eric Holder spoke to an overflowing crowd for Black History Month at the Justice Department Wednesday.

Tom Foreman | Bio
AC360° Correspondent

Are we cowards for not talking more about race?

Attorney General Eric Holder says that is exactly what Americans are for not directly engaging in that thorny issue. His statement has raised a lot of eyebrows from people of all colors, especially considering Holder is the first African-American to hold that position while Barack Obama, just one month ago, became the nation’s first black president.

For many Americans – black, white and otherwise – these are signs of extraordinary progress and it hardly seems the time to be putting on a fresh hair shirt over this issue. There is, after all, that whole economy business. One could argue that the only color we should be worried about at the moment is green.

Holder is certainly right, however, when he says that we remain a largely segregated society. Despite decades of cheerful talk about better days coming, the vast number of our communities tend to be largely monochrome. Sure, you can find places where brave racial explorers have established outposts in neighborhoods where almost everyone else is a different color; you can even find some areas with dazzling mixes of ethnicities, religions, ages, and political views; but towns like that remain rare compared to the size of the country’s population.

Still, despite our bird-like tendency to flock by the feather, the attorney general may be overlooking some important signs of racial progress because of his age.

Holder was born in 1951. I was born eight years later. We’ve both been around long enough to have witnessed some of what sure-enough segregation was about: teachers telling white children to stay away from black children, racial fights raging at bus stops, restaurants where only whites were welcome, older white people openly disparaging black people and the list goes on. It is little wonder the subject remains raw for people over forty.

But younger Americans are a different story. A study by New York’s Hamilton College some years ago found that people born after the civil rights struggle of the 1960’s (which is to say ‘born into a country free of formal racial barriers’) view race in far more relaxed and accepting terms than their parents. Most favored the idea of multi-cultural teaching to reduce racial misconceptions. More than 70 percent said they would consider dating someone of a different race. Almost half said if they adopted a child, the race would not matter. All of that is undeniable progress.

To be sure, America still has real racial problems. The recent history of our prisons, our courts, our politics and social structure all say the Attorney General has a point. But for many younger Americans the change of heart he is after may already be old news.

Attorney General Eric Holder helps celebrate Black History Month at an event Wednesday at the Justice Department.

Carmen Van Kerckhove
President, New Demographic

In a speech at the Department of Justice on Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder declared that when it comes to dealing with the issue of race, we are "essentially a nation of cowards."

While his choice of words was harsh, he was absolutely right in pointing out the fact that honest, authentic, and productive conversations about race rarely happen in this country.

Following his historic speech on race last spring, Barack Obama was castigated by some cable channel talking heads for "throwing his white grandmother under the bus" because he had the audacity to point out that his own flesh and blood - the grandmother who had helped to rear him and loved him like a son –- had herself been guilty of internalizing and reflecting racist stereotypes.

Should Obama’s revelation have come as a surprise? Not really.

We've been conditioned from an early age by advertising, pop culture, and the news media. We're surrounded 24/7 by images steeped in racial stereotypes. There's simply no way for us not to be influenced by them.

So why the denial? For the reason Holder explained: Once we open this particular Pandora’s box to the light, we’re going to expose notions and prejudices most people fervently wish we could put behind us.

Unfortunately, trying to relegate racism to the past is premature. We’re just not there yet.

Just look at the reaction to Holder’s comment. Instead of acknowledging his (somewhat obvious, really) remark about race with a silent, knowing nod, many are rushing to call Holder a troublemaker for stating an inconvenient truth.

People are far too eager to proclaim how colorblind and post-racial they are. Last summer, a Washington Post-ABC News poll posed the question “If you honestly assessed yourself, would you say that you have at least some feelings of racial prejudice?" Only three in ten of the respondents answered yes.

Apparently, many Americans of all backgrounds have convinced themselves that they are not any part of the problem, even though racism continues to deny people of color a level playing field in just about every aspect of our society.

We’ve fallen victim to denial because in the past twenty years, there has been far too much emphasis on “celebrating diversity” at the expense of taking a hard look at race and racism.

As Latoya Peterson recently wrote on our blog Racialicious, "The history that we currently teach is hopelessly sanitized to the point where people are still unsure exactly what happened at a lynching, and are unaware of the historical meaning of behind leaving nooses as 'a prank.'"

School textbooks gloss over the unsavory realities of genocide, slavery, and other systematic forms of institutionalized racism. Every February, black history is boiled down to little more than a series of Trivial Pursuit™-like facts about who invented peanut butter.

What Holder said hit many as hard as it did because, down deep, we know he’s right. We don't dare face our own deepest, darkest prejudices and bring them into the light where we might re-examine and eventually obliterate them.

Professing to be “colorblind” is not an answer; it’s a dodge. We need to stop pussyfooting around the issue and face it head-on.

It's time for us to have a real conversation about race.

Desmond Tutu
BBC News

Desmond Tutu, the first black South African archbishop of the Anglican church and veteran campaigner against apartheid, gives a lecture in London on Thursday to mark the 75th anniversary of the British Council. Here, he explores some of the same themes in an article written for BBC News.

I make no apology for talking and writing, in the UK, about a foreign leader. But expectations of him are so high and attention worldwide is glued to his every step as he reaches the end of his first month in office. He is the story of the moment.

Read More...

Anderson talks with his panel in a discussion about a New York Post editorial cartoon some say is racist.

Carmen Van Kerckhove
President, New Demographic

A few days ago I found an email in my inbox from publisher Conde Nast, informing me that if I subscribed to Vogue now, I'd be guaranteed to receive the spring fashion issue, featuring Michelle Obama on the cover.

Magazine junkie that I am, I've received plenty of subscription solicitations in my day, but can't remember ever receiving one tied to a promise of receiving a particular issue. It goes to show how big of a deal this cover is.

Copies are selling on eBay at three and a half times the cover price. There are reports of shortages, with people desperate to get their hands on a copy. The issue is even making headlines around the globe in India, England, South America, and Australia.

In case anyone is wondering what’s so utterly remarkable about having Michelle Obama model the cover of Vogue, consider the fashion magazine’s blighted past in matters of race.

Vogue has a history of publishing disquieting images of black people, so the March cover - showing Michelle Obama in a healthy, glowing, glamorous light - is a definite departure for the magazine.

Traditionally, Vogue has thrown a spotlight on very few faces of color. In the last decade, only five covers have featured blacks: Oprah in November 1998, Halle Berry in December 2002, Liya Kebede in May 2005, Jennifer Hudson in February 2007, and Lebron James in April 2008. And during the past 80 years, only 18 of Vogue’s covers – that’s less than 2% - have featured black women.

Even the few Vogue covers which have featured black celebrities have been heavily criticized by advocacy groups. Jennifer Hudson's cover was decidedly unflattering, showing her mouth hanging open, while the Lebron James/Gisele Bündchen cover was widely derided as overtly racist, with its unmistakable allusion to a renowned World War I propaganda poster. Vogue could have picked a more elegant shot of the two, but instead chose to go with King Kong imagery, with James hunched in the great ape’s position, looking lethal.

If the above examples aren’t sufficient to prove my point, several times a year Vogue publishes a photo shoot that “contrasts” a white model against natives of color from another country, in an apparent attempt to spotlight the “primitive” or “uncivilized” nature of non-whites.

But Vogue isn’t the only fashion player with a race problem. Over the last few years, a heated debate has been brewing about the lack of diversity in the fashion industry. In late 2007, legendary model Iman and model agency owner Bethann Hardison hosted a series of town-hall style meetings at the New York Public Library to emphasize the discrimination faced by models of color. Robin Givhan, the respected fashion columnist at The Washington Post, has written a series of articles examining this very issue. And even Vogue itself ran an article in its July 2008 issue with the headline “Is Fashion Racist?”

So are we beginning to discern a glimmer of light at the end of a very long tunnel when it comes to race and fashion? The Michelle Obama Vogue cover is perhaps an early sign, as is the rise of up-and-coming models of color like Jourdan Dunn, Chanel Iman, and Arlenis Sosa. All are making inroads in a field which has been largely denied to people of color.

For better or worse, Vogue is viewed as a key arbiter of what's considered beautiful in American society. Having the magazine shine a spotlight on First Lady Michelle Obama’s decidedly non-European brand of beauty - with her dark skin, full nose and lips, and athletic build - means a lot to millions of people of color.

It’s no wonder the issue is flying off the shelves.