invisible blog

Links to news that matters to you.

1. An analyst in the Christian Science Monitor looks at polling results to try and discover where Obama’s race might be an issue in the general election - and discovers some startling facts. “By far, Obama’s race presents the biggest challenges to voters living in communities with relatively high African-American populations.”
2. Coincidentally, the Los Angeles Times covers the tightrope the Obama campaign is walking in trying to energize and enfranchise African-American voters without alienating whites who live in the same areas.
3. An article in the New York Times reviews the role that “ambivalence” about mixed marriages plays in the reaction to Obama’s candidacy in some parts of America.
4. Ralph Nader has set off a firestorm by claiming that Barack Obama is no different from any other candidate - except that he is an African-American ‘trying to “talk white” and to appeal to “white guilt.”‘ The International Herald Tribune reports.
5. Few sources care to address the actual nature of African-American Muslims and their place within Islam and America. Slate tries to answer some questions, including whether they are Sunni or Shi’ite.
6. An unusual defense of talk show host Don Imus, in the news again for race-related comments, on the African-American magazine Root.
7. New England Blade complains that the problems faced by African-Americans of alternate sexualties are routinely ignored in the Black press, blaming it on, among other things, an ‘unspoken “politics of silence.”‘
8. Washington State is about to shut down housing finance corporation Countrywide after evidence emerges of institutionalised discrimination in their lending practises. The Seattle Times has the story.
   
9. The University of California system is set to make a major change int its policy on guaranteed admissions, one which will greatly reduce the number of minority students admitted, worries the San Francisco Chronicle.
10. Health Behavior News analyses a new report that suggests that African-American men are particularly liable to suffer from high blood pressure that goes undetected, undiagnosed and untreated.
11. The New York Times discusses an issue of Italian Vogue that draws attention to discrimination in the fashion industry by featuring only Black models.