Forty-Eight years of constant, hard work, finally come to fruition.

Not involving a leather-slave and gravy condensed down to two minutes. In the State where the Civil War began (and yes, they started it) a white guy beats up on a black guy while a bunch of self-justifying and aggrieved white people cheer and boo. What could be a better image on MLK day?

Pat Buchanan keeps his job on MSNBC despite spouting racist claptrap. In fact, Pat still has a fine six (or seven?) figure contract with the cable network despite writing books that have ventured from remaking Hitler to white supremacy. Buchanan’s on a book tour for his book about the good ol’ days of segregation and decided to appear on the talk show “The Political Cesspool” — and a fine example of tolerance it is.

Something has indeed changed in race relations, author Ellis Cose concludes. There is less anger and rage, more hope and faith toward the future among African Americans of all income levels than there has ever been; more willingness by most white Americans to regard their fellow black citizens on an equal footing. This is especially true among the younger generations within both groups.

Up with People was a non-profit corporation, a counter to the counterculture, the voice of Nixon’s Silent Majority and it’s well-publicized busload of kids traveling the world and staying with host families delivered an experiment in a new life style, a freshly scrubbed version of hippies. Whether singing “Freedom Isn’t Free” at a barbed wire Berlin Wall checkpoint, showcasing their talents at Richard Nixon’s Inaugural, or performing in later years before groups of auto workers–who unknowingly would soon be laid off by the tour sponsor General Motors–Up with People was on message for the Establishment, spreading the word that being nice was nice, and the nicer you were to people, the more niceness would spread. And the world would live happily ever after.

In news that will startle exactly nobody, a Fox yapping head resorts to cheap race baiting.

Most of the time, I read a news story about something in education, and I think about it for about five minutes before letting it go, chalking it up to just another new smudge on the complicated stained glass window that is public education. The other day, though, I read the article “In N.C., a new battle on school integration,” and I thought of little else during my “processing” time, with the exception of lesson modifications and other “teachery” things like that.

On “Morning Joe” this AM, JoeScar started laying the groundwork for Haley Barbour, claiming that he’s going to be labeled a “racist” by “the media” if he runs against Obama—just because he’s a “white Southerner.”

Wingnuts do love their false equivalencies, but this is disgusting even for them.

[Welcome Professor Michelle Alexander, and Host Paul Street] [As a courtesy to our guests, please keep comments to the book.  Please take other conversations to a previous thread.  - bev] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the age of Color Blindness Early in her courageous and important book The New Jim Crow: [...]