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    • People still come to this spot at the end of Lock Three Road, in the swamps along the Louisiana-Mississippi border, where Cynthia Lynch's bloodied body was found beneath shrubs. Her death was an unlikely culmination to a weekend-long Ku Klux Klan initiation ceremony, coming just days after Barack Obama's victory. She had applied to join online and traveled hundred of miles to attend the ceremony. Her death has left this region shocked, fearful of resurgent white supremacist groups, and dreading becoming a symbol of racial hatred in America.
    • She arrived in Slidell on Fri., Nov. 7. It was precisely three days after Barack Obama's election as America's first black President. There had been some nervousness in parts of the country in the months leading up to that milestone. In October, two men had been arrested in Tennessee for allegedly plotting to kill Obama. His victory seemed to incite a violent revulsion among a few whites already dismayed by the economic crisis and surging immigration. White supremacist groups and Internet forums like Stormfront.org reported a surge in interest. "I think there's a perfect storm coming together, and we're at a very worrying moment," says Mark Potok, editor of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report, which tracks hate crimes in America.

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      I thought it would be cruel to write any sooner, when whites and blacks alike were so effusively celebrating Obama’s victory. It would be unseemly to strike a discordant note when a clear majority of Americans was savoring this putative post-racial moment in their history.

    • Memories are so short. In the weeks following his choice of Sarah Palin on August 29, John McCain began closing the gap behind Obama.  The election got closer after Palin electrified the Republican Convention with her line about how “We grow good people in our small towns…”  The message to blacks, Hispanics and Asians in America’s cities was clear: they are not “good people.”

       

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    • Amanda Jones, 109, the daughter of a man born into slavery, has lived a life long enough to touch three centuries. And after voting consistently as a Democrat for 70 years, she has voted early for the country's first black presidential nominee
    • Jones' father herded sheep as a slave until he was 12, according to the family, and once he was freed, he was a farmer who raised cows, hogs and turkeys on land he owned. Her mother was born right after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, Joyce Jones said. The family owned more than 100 acres of land in Cedar Creek at one point, she said.

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    • The first black president of the United States cannot credibly govern without a national black agenda. But don’t depend on him to front it.
      • But what is a "black agenda" and how does it differ from every other agenda or concern. And, as president, should Obama prioritize that part of his identity? Or particular concerns of particular groups of AFrican Americans?

    • Black progressives have a different, urgent mission: to put meat on the bones of a black economic and social compact.

        

      It’s payback time.

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    • Serves them right, making small talk to one another on a plane. While being dark-skinned and Muslim-looking at that!
      • Stange as it sounds we life in an age where people will say that if you're a certain race or relgion, there are some things you shouldn't even be mistakenly heard to say.

    • Those cultural signifiers are not easily washed away, the urge to be "alert" and "ready" and "aware" and "on watch". And ultimately, there are very strict, not-even-subliminal definitions on who we have to watch and who we don't have to watch. And ethnicity is the dividing line.

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    • In "An Enduring Crisis for the Black Family," Kay Hymowitz blames the economic disfranchisement of African Americans upon the personal behavior of Black people and the silence of Black leaders concerning this behavior.   Ms. Hymowitz portrays the massive national growth of single parent homes as a Black pathology.  She uses the real challenge of the breakdown in the traditional family to further stereotype and lay blame on African Americans for racial inequality in this country.  
    • As one who studies racial inequality and the African American condition in particular, I have often been told to ignore the studies that show there is still racial prejudice in employment, homeownership, and predatory lending, and to instead look at the rapid decline of two parent households for African Americans.

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    • Barack Obama's election as U.S. president has provoked a rise in hate crimes against ethnic minorities, civil rights groups said on Monday.
    • Hundreds of incidents of abuse or intimidation apparently motivated by racial hatred have been reported since the November 4 election, though most have not involved violence, said the Southern Poverty Law Center.

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    • Officials ordered nine Muslim passengers, including three young children, off an AirTran flight headed to Orlando from Reagan National Airport yesterday afternoon after two other passengers overheard what they thought was a suspicious remark.
    • Members of the party, all but one of them U.S.-born citizens who were headed to a religious retreat in Florida, were subsequently cleared for travel by FBI agents who characterized the incident as a misunderstanding, an airport official said. But the passengers said AirTran refused to rebook them, and they had to pay for seats on another carrier secured with help from the FBI. 

       

       Kashif Irfan, one of the removed passengers, said the incident began about 1 p.m. after his brother, Atif, and his brother's wife wondered aloud about the safest place to sit on an airplane. 

       

       "My brother and his wife were discussing some aspect of airport security," Irfan said. "The only thing my brother said was, 'Wow, the jets are right next to my window.' I think they were remarking about safety." 

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    • So you'll remember that on Tuesday, a DOJ report found that John Tanner, the former chief of the department's voting rights section, had told a colleague over email in 2004 that he liked his coffee "Mary Frances Berry style -- black and bitter." Berry, an African-American, was at the time the chair of the US Commission on Civil Rights.
    • Now Tanner is trying to make amends. Moments ago he forwarded to TPMmuckraker a letter of apology he sent to Berry dated January 13.
    • Some Americans say Obama’s race and uncommon background make them uncomfortable – here those people include Democratic precinct chairmen and get-out-the-vote workers. Many Americans receive e-mails falsely calling Obama a Muslim – here a local newspaper columnist has joked in print that Obama would have the White House painted black and would put Islamic symbols on the U.S. flag.
    • I’ve never been prejudiced in my life,” said Sharon Fleming, 69, the wife of a retired coal miner, who spends hours at the union hall calling voters on behalf of Obama. “My niece married a black, and I don’t have a problem with it. Now, I wouldn’t want a mixed marriage for my daughter, but I’m voting for Obama.”

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    • "Over in Indiana, PA and Northern Cambria, PA, volunteers fielded complaints of a massive wave of ugly robocalls both paid for by John McCain's campaign and those paid for by third parties. The third party call was interactive, and purported to be from Barack Obama himself. The call starts out reasonably, and then "Obama" asks what the listener thinks is the most important issue. Whatever the response, "Obama" then launches into a profane and crazed tirade using "n***er" and other shock language."
    • The latest newsletter by an Inland Republican women's group depicts Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama surrounded by a watermelon, ribs and a bucket of fried chicken, prompting outrage in political circles.
    • The October newsletter by the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated says if Obama is elected his image will appear on food stamps -- instead of dollar bills like other presidents. The statement is followed by an illustration of "Obama Bucks" -- a phony $10 bill featuring Obama's face on a donkey's body, labeled "United States Food Stamps."

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    • 54 year-old white male, voted Kerry '04, Bush '00, Dole '96, hunter, NASCAR fan...hard for Obama said: "I'm gonna hate him the minute I vote for him. He's gonna be a bad president. But I won't ever vote for another god-damn Republican. I want the government to take over all of Wall Street and bankers and the car companies and Wal-Mart run this county like we used to when Reagan was President."
       
       The next was a woman, late 50s, Democrat but strongly pro-life. Loved B. and H. Clinton, loved Bush in 2000. "Well, I don't know much about this terrorist group Barack used to be in with that Weather guy but I'm sick of paying for health insurance at work and that's why I'm supporting Barack."
    • Far from heralding a new age of tolerance, Obama's victory in the November 4th election has highlighted the stubborn racism that lingers within some elements of American society as opponents pour their frustration into vandalism, harassment, threats and even physical attacks.

      Cross burnings, black figures hung from nooses, and schoolchildren chanting "Assassinate Obama" are just some of the incidents that have been documented by police from California to Maine.

      There have been "hundreds" of cases since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.

    • The phenomenon appears to be at its most intense in the Southern states, where opposition to Obama is at its highest and where reports of hate crimes were emerging even before the election. Incidents involving adults, college students and even schoolchildren have dampened the early post-election glow of racial progress and harmony, with some African American residents reporting an atmosphere of fear and inter-community tension.

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    • Black figures were hung by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the <i>Bangor Daily News</i> reported, while crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, New Jersey, and Apolacan Township, Pennsylvania. In Massachussetts, a nearly-finished church belonging to a black congregation was burned to the ground just hours after Obama's victory was declared.
    • Grant Griffin, a 46-year-old white Georgia native, expressed similar sentiments: "I believe our nation is ruined and has been for several decades and the election of Obama is merely the culmination of the change.

      "If you had real change it would involve all the members of (Obama's) church being deported," he said.

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    • A family of Barack Obama supporters awakened this morning to find a burned 6-foot cross on the front lawn of their home in northern Warren County, police said. 

      The charred cross was partly wrapped with a homemade congratulatory banner that declared "President Obama Victory '08" and had been stolen from the lawn the night before, police said.

    • Police said that between 1 and 7:30 a.m., someone set ablaze a cross composed of a metal fence post and a couple of two-by-fours.
    • The number of Americans who believe that the country is ready for a black president is rising, a poll released Thursday suggested.
    • More than three quarters, 76 percent, of respondents in a CNN/Essence Magazine/Opinion Research Corp. poll said the country is ready to be led by an African-American, up 14 percentage points since December 2006.

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    • You see, Lou doesn't see a problem with race relations in this country -- he feels the problem people have talking about it is the fault of those "cotton-picking" people. Watch the video to your right.

      "The reality is, this is the most socially, ethnically, religiously, racially diverse society on the face of the earth," Dobbs said. "Now, Wolf, we don't make enough of that in the national media. We listen to some idiot say you can't talk about race."

      Then Dobbs tripped over his words, as he declared, "Not a single one of these cotton...[stammering]...these just ridiculous politicians should be the moderator on the issue of race."
    • A student found four nooses in a classroom at Central Michigan University earlier this week, the school said Thursday.

      The student found the nooses in a section of the Engineering and Technology Building typically used by senior engineering students. They were made of compressed gas lines that are typically used in laboratory work, according to a news release.

      Michigan state Sen. Hansen Clark said he met with the university president to discuss how to handle the incident. He plans to make a statement Friday on whether the university will ask federal authorities to investigate the case.

      "There was no reason for the nooses to be hung like that," Hansen said. "The community is looking at this as a racist act."

    • The employee who wore what some said was a racially insensitive Halloween costume to a party hosted by a top immigration official is being directed by the Homeland Security Department Secretary to take administrative leave.
    • The employee's leave will continue while a Department inquiry is conducted, according to Secretary Michael Chertoff.

      The employee wore a striped prison outfit, dreadlocks and darkened skin make-up to the party hosted by Julie Myers, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

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