Morris Brown College may not open its doors to students in the spring. The historically black college in Atlanta faces mounting bills as students, parents and faculty weigh an uncertain future. Stanley Pritchet, the school's acting president, discusses the crisis at Morr

Morris Brown College may not open its doors to students in the spring. The historically black college in Atlanta faces mounting bills as students, parents and faculty weigh an uncertain future. Stanley Pritchet, the school's acting president, discusses the crisis at Morri

Massive budget shortages have brought NPR to the space between a rock and a hard place ... that is: cancellation time.

"Polls show that whites and blacks tend to have different views on the amount of racism in the U.S." said CNN polling director Keating Holland. "So it's not surprising that they would have different views on the likelihood of an African-American president."

"A majority of blacks now believe that a solution to the country's racial problems will eventually be found," Holland said. "In every previous poll on this topic dating back to 1993, black respondents had always said that racial problems were a permanent part of the American landscape."

"According to proponents of ID, the "hard problem" of consciousness - how our subjective experiences arise from the objective world of neurons - is the Achilles heel not just of Darwinism but of scientific materialism. This fits with the Discovery Institute's mission as outlined in its "wedge document", which seeks "nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies", to replace the scientific world view with a Christian one."

Not so. Mr. Obama's 43% share of the white vote in the general election was actually a tad larger than that of John Kerry in 2004 (41%) or Al Gore in 2000 (42%).

Consider Iowa, with only a miniscule African-American population. The 5% of voters who said race was the most important factor in their choice of whom to vote for backed Mr. Obama 54% to 45%. Or consider Minnesota and Wisconsin, also overwhelmingly white, where Mr. Obama's lead was 18% and 21% respectively among the 5% to 7% of voters who made race their highest priority.

The aggressive federal interference in state and local districting decisions enshrined in the Voting Rights Act should therefore be reconsidered. That statute, adopted in 1965 and strengthened by Congress in the summer of 2006, demands race-driven districting maps to protect black candidates from white competition. That translates into an effort to create black representation proportional to the black population in the jurisdiction

The rhetoric, once again, masks racism through comparative oppressions - the prevailing misrepresentation of how the black vote, and also the Hispanic vote, supported anti-gay policies on the day that black history would be irrevocably altered.

Gay is the New Black

In addition to Logan, they include Valerie Jarrett, CEO of real estate management firm The Habitat Co. and now co-head of Obama's transition team; Jim Reynolds, CEO of investment bank Loop Capital Markets; John Rogers, CEO of mutual fund icon Ariel Investments; Quintin Primo III, CEO of commercial real estate development company Capri Capital Partners; and Frank Clark, CEO of electrical utility Commonwealth Edison.

Later, during his second year in the U.S. Senate, Obama called Clark, among others, to discuss whether it made sense for him to mount a bid for the Presidency. Clark, 62, is one of Chicago's elder statesmen and chief of ComEd, a subsidiary of energy giant Exelon (EXC) and the largest electric utility in Illinois, serving nearly 4 million customers in Chicago and Northern Illinois. He didn't mince words: "Your window of opportunity is now," Clark recalls saying. "Go do it."

"Our generation has been limited in terms of how far we can dream," Logan said on Tuesday night just minutes before Obama took the stage. The son of two teachers who worked on Chicago's South Side, Logan majored in accounting and economics at Florida A&M University, a predominantly black college, and later earned an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago. "We've too often been under the impression that we can only serve our own. We've had constraints applied to what we can achieve."

Taylor: Well, I think it says that the country feels a great relief about getting rid of some of its past. I have the feeling that across the nation, people, Black and White, feel a sense of relief, of anticipation, of hope about the future and about the future of the nation. I'm rather inclined to feel that if this had not happened -- and I don't know, nobody knows what will happen -- but if this had not happened, the nation was on -- is on so precipitous a downward plunge economically, ideologically, religiously -- any way you want to put it -- that how the nation would fare in the years ahead is hard to determine and it's hard for one to feel great confidence about what it would be like. And we don't know what President Obama's going to do and what he's going to be, but he has infused into the nation a new sense of hope and promise and fulfillment.

Taylor: Yes. Well, I have a theory -- it's maybe not a sound one -- that every 35, 40, 45 years, the nation passes through a kind of traumatic change

And I think -- and each era seems to spend itself and to start off in a kind of enthusiasm and euphoria and confidence and then is worn down by events and by experience until it becomes cynical and doubtful

Going someplace is a very modern notion - it suggest progress - a point - utopia. The post modern themes that are part of these many statements decry these notions. Until know I simply thought of my state as a paradoxical mood - a kind of infestation of my spirit. The until I saw the following video.

We’re beginning to get a sense of how Barack Obama’s political success could change global perceptions of the United States, redefining the American “brand” to be less about Guantánamo and more about equality. This change in perceptions would help rebuild American political capital in the way that the Marshall Plan did in the 1950s or that John Kennedy’s presidency did in the early 1960s.

In his endorsement, Mr. Powell added that an Obama election “will also not only electrify our country, I think it’ll electrify the world.”

Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes, which conducted the BBC poll, said that at a recent international conference he attended in Malaysia, many Muslims voiced astonishment at Mr. Obama’s rise because it was so much at odds with their assumptions about the United States

The United States has the highest inequality and poverty in the OECD after Mexico and Turkey, and the gap has increased rapidly since 2000, the report said. France, meanwhile, has seen inequalities fall in the past 20 years as poorer workers are better paid.

In 2007, about 30 percent of the nation’s 622 black state legislators represented predominantly white districts, up from about 16 percent in 2001, according to data collected by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research group based in Washington that has kept statistics on black elected officials for nearly 40 years.

“There’s a fair amount of experience out there among white voters now, and that has lessened the fears about black candidates,” said Dr. Hajnal, whose book about white experiences with black mayors, “Changing White Attitudes Toward Black Political Leadership,” was published last year by Cambridge University Press.

Several themes coalesced over the two-day period. A prominent one was the oft repeated, "Did race trump gender?" Dr. Cynthia Neal-Spence, Associate Professor of Sociology at Spelman College, spoke about the dilemma of the black female. Asking, "Are we as a group more gender conscious or race conscious?" she then suggested "the media coverage had helped black women to choose sides." Despite Obama offering a post-racial approach, she sensed the same "tensions resurfacing that were in place during the suffragette movement." She also saw the media's analyzation as being "racialized."

However, Vojdik said, "Those in the media insisted on gendering her candidacy, taking her from the public sphere to the private construction of her identity as a wife and a mother." This was often accomplished through the use of specific language. She gave as examples the terms, "shrill, emasculating, castrating," with oft used analogies of Hillary as "the hectoring mother," or "the wife as ball-buster." Hillary was not male, but she "had failed as a female." On the other hand, Vojdik saw Sarah Palin as seeking to be elected because she was a woman in the "good wife and mother" mode. Projecting herself as stereotypically feminine, albeit a "pit bull with lipstick," she "appeals to the 80's concept of the superwoman." "But," Vojdik asked, "where are the supports for ordinary women?"

Although feminine for Sarah Palin is an asset, "feminine" attributes in general are considered a negative. "The process of gender," as phrased by Vojdik, is a methodology employed by the Republicans where they "feminize" a male candidate -- to his detriment.

And yesterday, I cried my last tears, after I watch the venomous, vile, and vitriolic display at the McCain-Palin rally unfold over the last few days.  I was raised in a Southern Baptist church, and I was taught as a young child when things look bleak and you are backed up against a wall you just let go and let God.

The angry - even vicious - letters in the online and paper versions of The R&B, the awful editorial cartoon branding Dr. Carroll a racist and the shredding of her professional reputation was appalling.

I left the articles without having any idea of what Dr. Carrol had done to lead to and result in a finding of harassment. I also have no idea what the connection is between her salary inequity claim and the finding of harassment. That should not be.

One of the major outcomes of the attacks of 9/11 is the clear contest between forces that believe that the world civilization so based on trust can endure the counter views of the terrorist. The question for me is to what degree do our USA national reputation and organizing principles engender trust and freedom.

Barack (Lets reason together) is clearly for recapturing our lost status and McCain wants to extend the tough guy image of the Bush doctrine (Fear US - USA reserves the right to attack first).

This is especially understood - but not excused - in those of my generation and older, both from a black and white perspective.  For blacks its owed to us based on time in the country - as if a quota could make such a tactic make sense or even worse is he black enough to get back what racism over these many years has taken from us. On the other end are whites that figure that any black person smart enough to become President must be smart enough to take back from them all the advantages that they have accumulated.

Poet-performer Jessica Care Moore’s “Love is Not the Enemy: Manifesto for 28″, Moore conveys a tough-minded resilience and a mature return to self in the face of disappointment. She isn’t sure what’s ahead of her, but there’s no doubt about how she’ll face it