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“No,” the president answered. “I actually think that it’s probably in its day-to-day interactions less racially divided.” Inskeep also asked the president about working with a Congress where both houses are controlled by Republicans. Obama offered a familiar answer. “Now you’ve got Republicans in a position where it’s not enough for them simply to grind the wheels of Congress to a halt and then blame me,” he said.

<p>Following the execution of two New York Police Department officers, a Brandeis University student leader wasted no time in making it clear that she did not care that they were murdered.</p> <p>“i have no sympathy for the nypd officers who were murdered today,” Khadijah Lynch, a junior and an Undergraduate Department Representative in the African and Afro-American Studies Department, wrote on Twitter.</p>

As protests across the country carry on without relent, the top brass running the show have put some serious thinking into how best to achieve racial equality. Apparently, part of the plan involves directions as to what white folks who want to protest can, and cannot do. I guess black people want to make sure white people keep their white privilege in check. Or something like that. Not sure. The Right Scoop has printed screen shots of these lists at a demonstration in Boston, which are hand written on large pieces of paper. Some instructions are in black. Others in...

Speaking to a mostly white college audience: "“This progress has been hard but it has been steady and it has been real,” Obama said at Northwestern University on Oct. 2. “And it’s the direct result of the American people’s drive and their determination and their resilience, and it’s also the result of sound decisions made by my administration. So it is indisputable that our economy is stronger today than when I took office.” Obama griped to party donors several days later that his accomplishments are a mystery even to his most loyal supporters. “Most of you don’t know the statistics...

After a week of riots and looting in Ferguson, Missouri, Charles Ogletree, the Harvard Law professor who was President Barack Obama's mentor, predicted that this is just the beginning of more unrest. After police shot and killed Michael Brown last weekend, Ogletree said the problem is, "you have these white officers who don't live there, who aren't a part of the community, who don't know the community, and yet they're given all the power to make things happen." "We need to have a change in that sense right now," Ogletree said on Meet The Press. "And I'll tell you what,...

KENNETT SQUARE, Pa. (AP) -- The cheerful sign outside Jane Cornell's summer school classroom in Pennsylvania's wealthiest county says "Welcome" and "Bienvenidos" in polished handwriting. Inside, giggling grade-schoolers who mostly come from homes where Spanish is the primary language worked on storytelling with a tale about a crocodile going to the dentist. The children and their classroom at the Mary D. Lang Kindergarten Center, near both mushroom farms and the borough's bucolic red-brick downtown, are a subtle reminder of America's changing school demographics. For the first time ever, U.S. public schools are projected this fall to have more minority students...

For white America, confronting its own racism is a lot like attitudes surrounding the virus that can lead to AIDS.Witnessing the death of Eric Garner, at the hands of uniformed police in New York City, got me to thinking about racism in America. This African-American man was confronted by police for selling single, probably-untaxed, cigarettes on the street. When the man resisted, he was held in a chokehold – a practice deemed unlawful for over 20 years – which was horrifyingly caught on tape. The man was obese and carried no firearm, yet he was wrestled to the ground and...

What would you think if your 8-year-old came home and told you that “white privilege is something that white people have, meaning they have an advantage in a lot of things and they can get a job more easily”? You would have heard that at the recent 15th annual White Privilege Conference in Madison, Wisconsin, attended by 2,500 public-school teachers, administrators and students from across the nation (http://tinyurl.com/lkoqj9b).The average parent has no idea of the devious indoctrination going on in classrooms in many public schools. What follows are some of the lessons of the conference.In one of the workshops, “Examining...

....The Ballad of the Civil Rights Movement has long been liberals’ favorite bed-time story. Martin Luther King Day may be the only day of the year when they feel completely, unambiguously proud to be Americans. It’s hard to exaggerate how important this is to liberal political thinking. They are perpetually looking for new ways to recapture that high. Conservatives tend to miss this because we see the Civil Rights story as settled history. We’re all pleased to have sloughed off the bigotry of our ancestors. Of course we want people to be judged “by the content of their character” and...

First Lady Michelle Obama talked about America as she visited a school today in China. She talked about the American dream: And my story isn’t unusual in America. Some of our most famous athletes, like LeBron James, and artists, like the singer Janelle Monae, came from struggling families like mine, as do many business leaders -- like Howard Schultz. He’s the head of a company called Starbucks, which many of you may have heard of. When Mr. Schultz was a boy his father lost his job, leaving their family destitute. But Mr. Schultz worked hard. He got a scholarship to...

The Black Hitler was a Chicago community organizer who moved to New York. Somewhere along the way he picked up a gold lined cape, a purple turban and a stepladder on which he used to stand while giving speeches outside the stores of Harlem's dwindling Jewish community. The cape and the turban were combined with Nazi style military shirt and jackboots, for the quixotic uniform of a man who is remembered today as a pioneering labor leader-- but was known back then as the Black Hitler. {snip}

COLLEGE PARK, Md. (CBSDC) – Accelerated aging and a greater likelihood of suffering from an age-related illness at a younger age are two consequences being linked to African-American men who have experienced high-levels of racism throughout their lives. A study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine finds that African-American men who reported high levels of racial discrimination, or who have internalized anti-black attitudes, have an increased risk of premature death and chronic disease than white people. Previous research has documented African-Americans’ shorter life expectancy and greater risk of chronic diseases, but this new study is the first to...

On MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry this morning, the host apologized for remarks she made on her show last weekend, a story first broken here at The Right Scoop. She apologized "without reservation or qualification" to the Romney family, and very emotionally to interracial families everywhere: ... So the only group due an apology yet to hear one, and who will almost certainly never hear one, are Republicans across the nation, who are caricatured and characterized as obviously racist every single day, based solely on their party affiliation. Unfortunately, as we'll show later today in a follow-up post, the racist assumption about...

The Ku Klux Klan was formed as a social club by a group of Confederate Army veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee in the winter of 1865-66. The group adopted the name Ku Klux Klan from the Greek word "kyklos," meaning circle, and the English word clan. In the summer of 1867, the Klan became the "Invisible Empire of the South" at a convention in Nashville, Tennessee attended by delegates from former Confederate states. The group was presided over General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who is believed to have been the first Grand Wizard -- the title for the head of the organization.

There he was again, making a cameo appearance at another historical commemoration, grabbing a sliver of the limelight before it moves on. He's become the man who's always in the background but so clearly, achingly would rather be in the forefront: The Hon. William J. Clinton, former president, former governor, former everything but straight-shooter. He was still as slick as ever when he got to speak for a few minutes on the 50th anniversary of the great March on Washington. . . Age has not withered nor custom staled his fine clintonesque touch, which consists not just of knowing what...

The cousin of Emmett Till, the black 14-year-old tortured and lynched in 1955 in Mississippi, appeared on MSNBC Friday morning and compared the murder of his cousin to the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Trayvon was fatally shot during an altercation by former neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman, a Hispanic, who was found not guilty on all charges. “The comparison to me is similar; there are a lot of parallels between Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin,” Simeon Wright began. “Number one: Trayvon was killed by a white boy that got out of his truck armed to the teeth — chased him...

Trayvon Martin’s hoodie became a nationwide symbol following his fatal shooting, and now the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History wants the original. The museum’s director, Lonnie Bunch, said Mr. Martin’s hoodie, the one he was wearing the night of his death on Feb. 26, 2012, represents a unique opportunity to further the discussion about race in America, The Washington Post reported.

House Democratic leaders launched an effort this week to curb racial discrimination in the nation’s criminal justice system, arguing that the current process treats minority groups unfairly. The lawmakers are examining what Congress can do — if anything — to fight racial profiling, iron out sentencing disparities and rein in other deep-rooted biases they say plague both the legal process and the country as a whole. The push comes weeks after George Zimmerman, a Florida neighborhood watch volunteer, was acquitted of murder charges in the killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African-American teenager, in a gated subdivision last year. The...

Brother AliBrother Ali also says, "racism is an institution" and that "racism is a serial killer." Brother Ali recently shared his thoughts on racism when asked to shed light on the Trayvon Martin case. He also spoke about racism as an institution and the way that racism impacts quality of life. "What we have is a 500-year-old legacy of African Americans being killed, particularly young men," Brother Ali told HardknockTV. "It's all people of color and it includes women too but there's a specific thing about young Black men being murdered by people who say that they're protecting us. They...

Mecklenburg County commissioner Kim Ratliff apologized Tuesday night to the public and her colleagues for saying she preferred that the next county manager not be a white man. Ratliff, the board’s vice chair who is a Democrat and black, said in a brief statement at the board’s regular meeting that she regrets making the statement. “My comments were meant to encourage all candidates to apply for the position and not meant to exclude anyone,” she said. “I realize now my comments may not have been appropriate, and I regret making them.”