Joe’s post about al-Qaeda’s recent foray into racial commentary raises an easily-overlooked opportunity. For years, the United States was plagued in its Cold War battles with the USSR because our domestic racism was so easily wielded against our protestations of righteousness and morality. Why not learn from our own mistakes? Racial progress tends to smoke out the reactionaries, as al-Zawahiri as so conveniently demonstrated. I wonder how well his racist commentary will play in Pretoria,...

New research indicates that in highly disadvantaged neighborhoods, GPA has a positive correlation with juvenile delinquency. This, to put it mildly, is distressing news, and really throws a kink into how we address the obstacles faced by urban youth.

Obama was elected President this week (didja hear?). And that’s fantastic. But most people of color are not Barack Obama. And declaring that his victory means the era of significant racial inequality is over, or that racism is effectively dead for the Black community writ large is a serious mistake that must be avoided.

It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of the moment. For someone like me, this is really the first time I’ve seen a Democrat win on the national stage. The historic nature of the candidacy only adds to the emotion. But I wanted to focus on some other things. First, an open letter to my conservative friends, who still have a valuable role to play in our democracy for the next four years. I look forward to your engagement. And second, and more somberly, it’s important to remember...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news The White House is asking its (now totally apolitical!) Justice Department to hamper 200,000 Ohio residents from voting. Black voters are really nervous about the integrity of this election. A Black Brazilian immigrant gets a lesson in racism upon arriving in America. Lawyers have finally secured access to a top-secret Guantanamo Bay camp where we hold high-ranking terrorist suspects. The total number of hate crimes dropped slightly this year, with...

I flagged this study by Yale law professor Ian Ayres in the civil rights roundup [The link in which I've now fixed -- DS], but I just wanted to block quote some of the findings: We found persistent and statistically significant racial disparities in policing that raise grave concerns that African Americans and Latinos in Los Angeles are, as we put it in the report, “over-stopped, over-frisked, over-searched and over-arrested.” After controlling for violent crime rates and property crime...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news Breath-taking results from a study by Ian Ayres on racial profiling by the LAPD. I’m probably going to write a separate post on this one — the data is jaw-dropping. [Link fixed -- I was wondering why I was getting all those hits to my post on cotton subsidies] The polls on Proposition 8 have been narrowing, and it looks like the right to gay marriage will go down to the wire. Three Jews, Four Opinions has a good perspective on how Jews...

I didn’t do a roundup today, but I did write two posts that are pretty directly tied to civil rights (not including the Sarah Palin’s wardrobe post I just linked to below). First, the data is now out on how barring affirmative action affected minority enrollment at Michigan’s state universities. The result? It’s a mixed bag, but the overall trends are a shift in minority enrollment to less-prestigious universities, a greater difficulty in attracting even qualified minority...

What feminism can tell us about the high price of Sarah Palin’s wardrobe (and whether she should pay taxes on it).

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news The US Supreme Court will resolve a circuit split on identity theft by illegal immigrants. The question is whether aggravated identity theft requires knowledge by the user that the documents he obtains are those of a real person, as opposed to fabrications. Immigrants with family members on both sides of the US/Mexico border are dreading increases in border fortifications, as they may interfere with simple visits to the border to share pictures, food,...

It was interesting to watch General Powell’s endorsement. It is clear that Powell thinks the modern Republican Party has stretched way beyond where he’s willing to go in terms of its race rightward. The concerns he laid out about the current GOP extend from the selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as VP, to the prospect of two more conservative judges on the Supreme Court, to the steady increase of Islamophobic fear-mongering that has characterized the Party since 9/11. Now, it is fair to say...

On the ballot in California is a proposal (Prop. 4) which would require teenagers seeking abortions to notify their parents. It doesn’t require their consent, and it has exceptions for abusive parents and a judicial bypass option. Sound okay to you? Well then play Modern Mitzvot’s Choose Your Own Adventure: Prop. 4 Saga! Fun for the whole family (except the pregnant teenage daughter, of course)!

So Barack Obama has asked that an special prosecutor be appointed to investigate allegations of voter registration fraud (aka, the ACORN controversy) and voter suppression efforts. The McCain campaign’s response? Not exactly in line with what you’d expect if you thought they were seriously and honestly concerned that this issue was “destroying the fabric of democracy.” To the twenty people left in the country who think the McCain campaign is serious or honest about anything...

The Republican Party keeps inching right up to that line of calling Barack Obama a terrorist.

I had the debate on, but wasn’t watching closely — in fact, I was playing solitaire while listening with an ear to it. The bottom line is that Obama is like a Winky Wright — you simply can’t hurt him. He’s too good defensively. A fellow chessmaster might be able to out-box him, but McCain is no debate whiz. McCain needed a knockout, and he wasn’t going to get it. And in striving for it, he sounded far more conservative and doctrinaire than he has at any point in...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news Among other problems, the language interpretation at Guantanamo Bay trials is awful. Wyoming remains one of the few states without a hate crimes law. The Tulsa World: Many Native Americans don’t celebrate Columbus Day. Civil rights leaders are worrying that a new agreement between Las Vegas officials and ICE will increase racial profiling and decrease the reporting of violent crime. Working from the ground up: Increased success by local Black...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news The Virginia GOP chair compared Obama to Osama, and then refused to back down after a critique from the McCain campaign (”While Barack Obama is associated with domestic terrorist William Ayers, the McCain campaign disagrees with the comparison that Jeff Frederick made.”). It’s a civil rights issue because I’m coming around on my earlier views as to whether the Obama-as-terrorist charges are racially-tinged or not. See also this...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news It’s election time, and you know what that means: illegally keeping eligible voters off the rolls! Polling places may not have the resources to handle the expected crush of voters this election. The Supreme Court is examining whether employees who cooperate in discrimination and harassment cases, but are not the complaining parties themselves, are protected via anti-retaliation provisions. A federal appeals court has blocked the release of 17...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news A Federal judge has ordered the release of several Chinese Muslim detainees from Guantanamo who have been cleared of links to terrorism for several years. The judge demanded that the men be admitted to the United States immediately, and ordered that immigration services not interfere with them in any way. The US filed an emergency appeal to stay the order, with White House spokeswoman Dana Perino saying that allowing admittedly innocent men wrongfully...

In my civil rights roundup today, I referenced an AP analysis which argued that Sarah Palin’s charge that Obama “pals” with terrorists had a “racial subtext”, as well John Cole’s claim that he really did not see it. I noted that while I essentially agree with Cole, I thought that the case raised some interesting hypotheticals worth exploring in a later post. Read the rest of this post over at The Debate Link.

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news Obviously, this column by the treasurer of the Buchanan County (Va.) GOP (and county representative on McCain’s Virginia leadership team) is not racist. After all, the author denied that it was, and we all know that’s good enough when it’s a White guy! It’s worth noting again — this election will be a pivotal one in terms of setting the Supreme Court’s agenda for the foreseeable future. It’s not a parody —...

Volokh conspirator Todd Zywicki has an interesting post up asking about people’s development on the issue of abortion. Specifically, how and why they might have changed their mind on the issue. He says that he knows plenty of people who used to be pro-choice, but became pro-life — but few who made the opposite journey. And for those who have, he’s curious as to what prompted the change in mindset. You can read about my own journey on this issue here, but the comments to Prof. Zywicki’s...

Oh, and one more thing on the debate…. Was I the only (Jewish?) person who winced when Sarah Palin repeatedly used the phrase “never again” to refer to how we should respond to the financial crisis? Obviously that phrase has very particular connotations to me that aren’t appropriately applied to even the worst economic situation, but I can’t decide if I was being objectively unreasonable or if other Jews might have reacted the same way.

These are off-the-cuff reactions, without having seen any commentary on the debate. In my only post on the subject prior to the VP debate, I talked a little bit about the “expectations game” and the extent to which it’s reasonable or unreasonable to use it as a frame for evaluating the debate. The basic theme I tried to lay out was that while beating expectations — particularly when the bar was set as low as it was for Gov. Palin — wasn’t enough for a win per se,...

The blogosphere is abuzz about this speech by AFL-CIO chief Rich Trumka, talking to the United Steelworkers about racism in the labor movement and how they need to fight against it to get the right candidate, Barack Obama, into office. My thoughts, and the reactions of other bloggers, over at The Debate Link.