Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast in August and September of 2005, upending the lives of 1.5 million people and putting Black folks’ lack of political and social power front and center for all the world to see.

The storms magnified racial disparities in the U.S., and no place demonstrated this more clearly than New Orleans, where 80% of the city was submerged after Katrina.

This has got to be my all-time favorite excuse for racist behavior EVER. “I wasn’t insulting black people, I was insulting Asian people! Also people with ears, as regards the Linkin Park thing. What, that’s no cool anymore?”

The uncomfortable truth that some of our founding fathers owned human beings to work their fields, clean and cook in their homes, and serve as forced concubines has upset the Tennessee Tea Party. So the Tea Party wants the textbooks to have a new way of portraying the ”Minority Experience In History.”

Newt Gingrich has repeatedly made comment that denigrate poor people but are little more than racist and classist stereotypes and dog whistles. This open letter by Joi Ruth Orr, Director of Organizing, Faith Leaders for Community Change, calling for an apology from Mr. Gingrich, needs to be spread far and wide.

Too many people think King’s statements regarding justice are only about race and the African-American community – thus excluding the LGBTQ community. But King said that, “Eventually the civil rights movement will have contributed infinitely more to the nation than the eradication of racial justice.” Members of King’s family also embrace his words, extending them to the LGBTQ community.

When 700 Club host Kristi Watts interviewed Condi Rice about her holiday dishes, both agreed that mac and cheese was their favorite item on the menu. This baffled the out-to-lunch fundamentalist, apocalypse-predicting Robertson, who didn’t mince words – after all, Condi’s black, Watts is black, therefore mac and cheese=”black food”.

How is it that Americans—consumers of the most media in the world—remain so misinformed about so many fundamental issues? How much does this phenomenon relate to the content offered by the news media? How much of mass media’s content is related to the political structures such as ownership, the law, and the organizations’ own goals? News for All The People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media examines this issue within two contexts – history and race.

I’ll never understand Herman Cain and his relationship to the GOP establishment; like former puppet Michael Steele, they don’t see (or don’t care) how rancid race-based politics in the Republican party have become. It’s been quite bold since the election of Barack Obama. My long view is that we do need more minorities (and LGBTs) in the GOP because without decent representation, there’s no incentive for the GOP to woo those demographics, which are currently beholden to the Democratic Party. That said, the Republican leadership has made its bed with the fundamentalists and nativist know-nothings, making Cain and other black Republicans curious cases that border on self-loathing.

On a day overshadowed by the coverage of the passing of Steve Jobs, we also lost a civil rights leader who literally took body blows for racial equality. The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, a contemporary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rep. John Lewis and others who put their lives on the line, died at 89.

Race infuses American politics and society in such toxic ways that we need more (and better) public engagement on the topic. But is criticism by progressives of Obama presumptively infused with at least some racism? Three essays.