Race and Class Discourse from an Ivory Tower in Connecticut

President Barack Obama’s nominee to the U. S. Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, is under attack by three lunatics to the right of the fringe right of the Republican Party for comments she made during a speech during a 2001 lecture at the University of California-Berkeley. Referring to former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's saying that "a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases," Judge Sotomayor said, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Because of this statement, the “three horsemen of the loony right,” Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are calling her a racist and are demanding that she withdraw her name from consideration for the nation’s highest court. Judge Sotomayor will make history if she is appointed to the High Court; she is the first Latino(a) to be nomina...

According to the authors of, The Silent Depression: State of the Dream 2009 , an annual report by United for a Fair Economy , people of color are suffering through a “Silent Depression” because although the evidence of its devastating effects are everywhere, it is going largely unseen, unrecognized and unaddressed. Instead, the country’s attention has been focused on the year-old recession afflicting the nation. People of color, however, have been experiencing a recession for the last five years, which has evolved into a full-blown depression where they live. “But there has been no recognition of this depression by the Congress, the President, or the mainstream news media. There has been no bailout, no aid package, no rule changed to reverse this disaster,” write the co-authors of the report. This year’s report, released on the 80th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., presents some jaw-dropping statistics about unemployment, and income and wealth inequality in American society: --...

On September 25, 1961, in the small town of Liberty in Amite County, Mississippi, Black farmer, Herbert Lee, 52, was shot and killed by E. H. Hurst, a white member of the State Legislature. At a coroner’s inquest, Hurst, testified that Lee owed him money and that when he asked about being paid, Lee had “come at him with a tire iron.” Hurst explained that the .38 he was holding “accidentally” fired a bullet into Lee’s head. “I must have pulled the trigger unconsciously,” he swore. An all-white jury ruled Lee’s murder a “justifiable homicide.” His killer, Representative Hurst, never spent a moment in jail. It is highly unlikely that Lee would have attacked Hurst. The father of nine children, Lee was a small (5 feet, 4 inches, and weighing only 150 pounds) man. As a matter of fact, two of three witnesses who testified at the inquest later admitted that they were coerced by the Sheriff and others into testifying that Lee had tried to hit Hurst (6-2 and 200 pounds) with the tire iron found ...