Funny but sad

It seems the Republicans know who their base isn't:



As the caption accompanying this photo states:

U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Col., is the sole Republican candidate to address the NAACP convention. He was flanked by lecterns with placards for nine other GOP candidates -- all no-shows.

Jeffrey Feldman asks a very good question about this picture, however. Essentially, why isn't this picture on every newspaper in the country? Not one of the major Republican candidates decided to show up to a forum dedicated to talking about race in America. Guiliani, Romney and McCain all had something better to do. Maybe they decided that they didn't have to attend because racism is over (since Imus was fired).

Race is no longer an issue- Whooppeee!

The 5 wise men on our Supreme Court have determined that race of students should no longer be considered when assigning schools. A group of parents sued to end the Louisville school districts policy of considering race when assigning students to competitive schools:

Louisville's schools spent 25 years under a court order to eliminate the effects of state-sponsored segregation. After a federal judge freed the Jefferson County, Ky., school board, which encompasses Louisville, from his supervision, the board decided to keep much of the court-ordered plan in place to prevent schools from re-segregating.

The lawyer for the Louisville system called the plan a success story that enjoys broad community support, including among parents of white and black students.

In a 5-4 decision the court found that Louisville's program was unfair to the white students. So, there you have it, everyone is equal now. I think they realized that racism died when Imus was taken off of the air. Unfortunately, some folks didn't get the message:

In September 2006, a group of African American high school students in Jena, Louisiana, asked the school for permission to sit beneath a "whites only" shade tree. There was an unwritten rule that blacks couldn't sit beneath the tree. The school said they didn't care where students sat. The next day, students arrived at school to see three nooses (in school colors) hanging from the tree.

The boys who hung the nooses were suspended from school for a few days. The school administration chalked it up as a harmless prank, but Jena's black population didn't take it so lightly. Fights and unrest started breaking out at school. The District Attorney, Reed Walters, was called in to directly address black students at the school and told them all he could "end their life with a stroke of the pen."

Black students were assaulted at white parties. A white man drew a loaded rifle on three black teens at a local convenience store. (They wrestled it from him and ran away.) Someone tried to burn down the school, and on December 4th, a fight broke out that led to six black students being charged with attempted murder. To his word, the D.A. pushed for maximum charges, which carry sentences of eighty years. Four of the six are being tried as adults (ages 17 & 18) and two are juveniles.