Black People

WASHINGTON - Call it an object lesson in the quality of equality. I refer to the recent Senate subcommittee hearing on the proposed constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage. And specifically, to an exchange between two leaders of the black community. The first, Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington bureau of the NAACP, argued that the amendment "would use the Constitution to discriminate." Which brought a sharp retort from the Rev. Richard Richardson, chairman of political affairs for the Black Ministerial Alliance of Greater Boston Inc. Defining marriage as the union of a woman and a man, he said, "is not discrimination.

TEACHER, AUTHOR, editor, scholar, Pan-Africanist and founding member of the NAACP, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, the first African-American to earn a doctorate from Harvard, is best known for The Souls of Black Folk, published 100 years ago this year. This slender volume of 14 essays quickly established itself as a keystone in 20th century thought. Both its title and language suggest the idea of a revelation, which is only partial. Mr. Du Bois hints of a deeper interpretation on "the strange meaning of being black" and on the promise of America at the dawn of the 20th century.

Top researchers expressed caution yesterday over a report that an experimental AIDS vaccine appeared to protect African-Americans against infection but not the broader population. "We need to be really cautious about interpreting data on race and ethnicity," said Dr. Donald Burke, who heads vaccine research at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, which took part in the vaccine trial. Factors other than race might explain why infection rates were much lower among vaccinated black people, Burke said.

Langston Hughes lives! Listen to his poetry sounding through the voice of a fifth-grade boy who ends a recitation of "I, Too, Sing America" by raising a defiant fist straight from the days of Black Power: They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed - I, too, am America. Langston Hughes, the black poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance, lives. He's on a postage stamp issued this month. He looks good, suave and elegant in that classic style. You could easily imagine him toasting the evening with Duke Ellington and keeping company with Lena Horne.

MADISON, Wis. - Friday marked the beginning of Black History Month. As a black American, this month is a time for me to honor the contributions we have made to the United States. So why don't I have any positive memories of Black History Month from my childhood? Year after year in school, I learned about the same five figures in black history (Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and Benjamin Banneker). Each year there was a different grade but the same five people.

FROM LOMBARD Street, along the remains of the block once known as Corned Beef Row, you could see all the way to Little Italy yesterday. For half a century, owing to the presence of the Flag House Courts housing project, this was considered utterly impossible. Yesterday, as all could finally see, they are one block apart. So the city comes to another crossroads: not just to demolish what everyone agrees was a catastrophe, but to replace it with something swell, something that contributes to the joy of living in this city instead of one more failure of insight and imagination, something that might connect two of the city's most endearing landmarks, Little Italy and East Lombard Street, in a manner combining charm and safety and good cheer.

"Salvation: Black People and Love," by bell hooks. William Morrow. 256 pages. $22. With her 18th book, "Salvation: Black People and Love," the feminist theorist bell hooks has her heart, it would seem, in all the right places. "Salvation," hooks tells her readers, is about love as the "platform on which to renew progressive anti-racist struggle," love as the "blueprint for black survival and self-determination." Who could deny the probable power of such a thesis? Who wouldn't want to see it coherently, persuasively argued?

NEW YORK -- I have been writing for some time about the problems of public education. I also have been highly critical of the elements in popular culture that encourage young people toward illiteracy, brutishness, hatred of women, whorishness and mindless materialism. Now we find that these troubles are combining in yet another way: as obstacles that prevent black kids from doing well in society. It is often difficult to talk about these things, because those who function on the racist circuits of our nation describe poor academic performance by black kids as proof of inherent inferiority, the intellectual quicksand of bad genes.

Summer school complaints expose parent disinterest Instead of complaining ("Schools hope classes will close skill gap," June 25), parents of students who have been identified as needing to attend remedial summer classes should be grateful that such programs are offered. These are probably the same parents who want even more out of the school system after their children have attended school for 13 years and still do not have the skills to quality for a decent-paying job. They are probably also the same ones who have no interest in their children's education during the school year, who have not read to their children, who have not checked their homework, who cannot be located during the school year to have a conference about their children's progress.

WHEN THEY chose to back Martin O'Malley for mayor last year, leading African-American politicians in Baltimore honored the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday we celebrate today. They heard some jeering, some suggestions that they were "pseudo" black people. Another mayoral candidate began urging black people to vote for someone who looked like them. A third suggested black voters should vote black because African-Americans had "come too far to turn back." This warning was right -- for a different reason.