Links to news that matters to you.
- The Chicago Tribune reports on flash points between the two presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, after the latter returned from his foreign trip. In particular, Obama attacked McCain’s support for a ballot initiative in his native Arizona reducing the scope of affirmative action.
- Obama made some of the remarks attacking McCain when he attended a meeting of prominent figures from the minority press. The Detroit Free Press says that he also discussed his attitudes to Muslims and to the question of whether he was “Black enough.”
- The Houston Chronicle says that the sustained “mislabeling” of Michelle Obama is only the latest installment of a pattern of stereotyping Black women.
- AM New York wonders if Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama’s disagreements signals a change in the quality and nature of Black leadership.
- Meanwhile, the New York Times thinks that it is possible that not everyone in Harlem has forgiven Bill Clinton, who was once that district’s most beloved resident.
- The Charlotte Post conducted a detailed survey of 3,400 African-Americans in the paper’s home town. It is a remarkable set of answers overall, highlighting the diversity of the Black community even in a single geographically small area.
- The Associated Press rounds up the latest on the racial tension surrounding the re-election campaign of Steve Cohen, the congressman who represents the African-American majority district of Nashville, Tennessee.
- The Washington Post reviews “The Agitator’s Daughter”, a family history by Sheryll Cashin, a professor at Georgetown, saying the book “gives readers a glimpse into the intimate, social and political lives of people who lived through the darkest days and the grandest moments of triumph that black folks have experienced in this country.”
- A girl who grew up in the old South returns after years in England to try and evaluate whether the racism she remembered has gone for good, and writes about it for the London Times.
- The Boston Globe has an article on the acceptance speech by the son of famed sportswriter Larry Whiteside for an award posthumouslygiven to his father. Whiteside was a legendary pioneer, the first African-American qualified to vote for the MLB Hall of Fame, and, according to the Globe “known for starting the “Black List,” a database of qualified African-American journalists which… helped sports editors from major newspapers find qualified African-American writers to hire.”
