Debating race is a series of conversations between Dawson and a wide swath of people from Scholars: Gary Orfield, Cornel West, politicians: John McCain, John Kerry and pop-political commentators Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher. They tackle many aspects in this book which is broken down into 7 areas.   Civil Rights Ethnicity Conflicting Loves Youth & Violence Black Masculinity Catastrophes Anatomy of A Conflict Why Bill Cosby is still wrong   Overall I found this book very powerful and presents a very deep dive into very controversial areas. Unfortunaly their is not enough dialog about those very serious issues. There is such a wealth of ideas presented in this book I could start a blog just tackling those issues. From reading the book here are a few thoughts.   The 7 areas discussed in his book, are not black and white but many shades of grey. I‘ve gained an appreciation of how complex each of these areas discussed in the book are.   The real struggle is about power and control. Those who have it the "ruling elite" and those do not "everyone else" To illustrate that example here are two facts. Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans and African Americans constitute about 25 percent of the population together. They have about 6 percent of our nation’s operating businesses. ...

At the Texan Republican convention there was booth hosted by the Republicanmarket that was selling an assortment of items. One of the buttons said “If Obama is President… will we still call it The White House? There has been a lot of talk about this, a lot of people were offended. Do you find this button offensive? Personally, I’m am not surprised by this or overly offended. Where there is differences between people there will be distrust, and fear. We see this in every level in society. Look this country is still quite divided, instead of open debate. Issues of race are kept under the radar. It’s sad that there are numerous amounts of people who would not like to see a black president. Its sad to see that their are people that will put color, or a persons sex above, qualifications. I say where the button! At least I know where you are coming from. On the other hand this is blatant. A Marietta bar owner was selling T-Shirts that had a picture of curious George holding a banana and in large copy it said Obama in 08. There was a poll on Croooksandlairs, the results was 41% were not offended by ...