Race Relations

The organizers of the city's race-relations summit plan to meet this week to prepare a report summarizing the summit's workshops and detailing its various recommendations."

Regarding the NAACP's recent rally for Trayvon Martin in Baltimore, I thought one of the goals of the organization was to improve race relations, not worsen them ("'We are Trayvon,' marchers proclaim," March 27). I am as outraged as anyone about the horrible fate that befell Trayvon, but how is the death of this young man any different than the hundreds of other innocent young black men slain every year In this country? The answer is: The race of the murderer. If the NAACP wanted to advance its goals, it would hold a rally every day, not just to shine a spotlight on mixed race-violence when the victim is black.

A survey conducted for People for the American Way, a liberal civil rights group in Washington, shows that 50 percent of Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 feel that race relations in the United States are "generally bad." Also, more than 50 percent feel pessimistic about America's future, although 37 percent think the best for the country still is ahead.The Evening Sun would like to know what you think. Are race relations better or worse than 10 years ago? Do you feel optimistic or pessimistic about the country's future?

"What's wrong with you people? You're all so cynical. You don't smile, you smirk. " - Megan Through all the years, through all the Peggy Olson working-girl iterations and Betty Draper mood changes and Don Draper bed-mate changes, one thing about "Mad Men" has remained the same: the show's about identity, how people cope with changes, roll with the punches or duck and run for cover. Society is there, too. Changing. In it's super-changey 1960s way.  And in the eagerly awaited "Mad Men" Season 5 premiere, it's right there in the viewer's face and on faces of the characters: Cultural upheaval!

When Sidney Hollander Sr., the legendary Baltimore civil rights and social activist, celebrated his 90th birthday in 1972, he reflected on his life's work seeking equality for those who had long been denied it. "I was always warned by my conservative friends that if you give Negroes one finger, they'll want the whole hand," he told a Sun reporter at the time. "That's what I'm for. If they get the whole hand, then they'll finally be equal. "We've broken down a lot of the taboos and restrictions, but we haven't broken down the emotions behind those taboos and restrictions," he said.

THE PRESIDENT'S idea to open a national dialogue on race was not exactly new to James E. Henson Sr.Howard County's human rights administrator has assembled people from various backgrounds to talk candidly about race relations for the last 15 months.I have my doubts about whether efforts by President Clinton or Mr. Henson will fundamentally improve race relations and lead to better public local and national policies, but the discussion is worthwhile.Study circles conceptThe "study circles" concept that Mr. Henson introduced to Howard County brings together diverse groups to sit around a table as equals.

I managed to intercept the playwright, J. Annette Barnes, before she could disappear backstage.This was Monday at Catonsville Community College, where a workshop on race relations on college campuses was geared to high school and college counselors and administrators and community groups that work with young people. Barnes' play, "Watcha Gonna Do?" was to be the focal point of the workshop and a discussion group that followed.She was directing. Curtain time was minutes away."There aren't going to be any answers to the problem of race relations in this play because I don't know what the answers are," said Barnes.

WASHINGTON -- If you were among those few Americans who watched the town meeting on race relations from Akron, Ohio, the other day, you saw the essence of President Clinton.A schmoozerMr. Clinton has always been a politician who loves to schmooze about issues and he was clearly in his element serving as the discussion leader in a meeting that, to no one's surprise, ran a half-hour longer than the scheduled 90 minutes. And Mr. Clinton also has been a politician who believes that it is possible to find common ground on questions that others consider irreconcilable.

A USA Today/Gallup poll released this week shows fewer Americans now believe that race relations are better than was the case in the first year of the Obama presidency. Thirty-five percent of those polled say they think race relations have gotten better compared to 41 percent who said the same in October 2009. When I see something like this, the first question that leaps to mind is how one is to define "race relations"? What does the phrase mean? Such a poll question lacks precision and leads the respondent into guessing what other people are thinking about "race relations.

When Sidney Hollander Sr., the legendary Baltimore civil rights and social activist, celebrated his 90th birthday in 1972, he reflected on his life's work seeking equality for those who had long been denied it. "I was always warned by my conservative friends that if you give Negroes one finger, they'll want the whole hand," he told a Sun reporter at the time. "That's what I'm for. If they get the whole hand, then they'll finally be equal. "We've broken down a lot of the taboos and restrictions, but we haven't broken down the emotions behind those taboos and restrictions," he said.

YORK, Pa. -- Motorists honked and shouted congratulations to Kim Bracey as she crossed tree-lined South George Street one crisp morning this week. Bracey made history Tuesday when voters elected her the first black mayor of York, a city with an ugly racial past. Forty years ago, a black woman and a white police officer were killed as riots convulsed the city, but it took decades for anyone to be brought to justice. Now here was Bracey, officially mayor-elect, waving to well-wishers.

"The American people are responding with great emotion and with great pride in our system that we have seen this latest step in reconciliation with respect to our race relations. ... We have not completely reconciled within my society, with my country. But what Mr. Obama represents is the best of America." Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell "I think that he helped to touch the core of what our ancestors had been struggling with for the last 200 years. So all of those unknown people who have struggled through slavery, through segregation and through adversity based on our race and not on our intelligence and our minds, that he now sets a new tone for people to look beyond race in moving this country forward."

Smart Growth session open to residents The Maryland Department of Planning's Task Force on the Future for Growth and Development in Maryland will hold a Smart Growth Listening Session for Harford and Cecil counties at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in Aberdeen High School's auditorium, 251 Paradise Road. Citizens are encouraged to attend and give input on issues, needs and concerns for the community. Information: www.mdp.state.md.us/listeningsessions.htm. Safety vests available State Highway Administration offices are offering reflective vests for children to wear while trick-or-treating Friday night.

Former Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin P. Clark and two of his deputies have filed a $20 million federal lawsuit against Gov. Martin O'Malley, former City Solicitor Ralph Tyler and four police officers, alleging that their firings nearly three years ago by then-Mayor O'Malley were racially driven. Clark was hired in 2003 from New York and fired 21 months into the job amid allegations that he had been involved in a domestic dispute with his fiancee in North Baltimore. O'Malley called the allegations - which were unsubstantiated - a distraction to the city's effort to fight crime.

PRETORIA, South Africa -- The vicious rumor at the Afrikaans Boys High School earlier this year went like this: Upon the death of Nelson Mandela, an underground army organized by the black-led ruling political party would rise up and kill whites across South Africa in belated revenge for decades of apartheid oppression. Among white students at this school that once educated the sons of apartheid-era presidents and prime minsters, the improbable scenario took on a name, Operation White Cleanup.

WILLIAM PETERS, 85 Documentary producer William Peters, a journalist and award-winning documentary film producer who chronicled American race relations, died Sunday in Boulder, Colo. A resident of Lafayette, Colo., Mr. Peters had lived for many years in Guilford, Conn. The cause was complications of Alzheimer's disease, his daughter Jennifer Peters Johnson said. Mr. Peters was best known for the documentary A Class Divided, which he produced, directed and co-wrote. Originally broadcast on PBS' Frontline in 1985, it told the story of Jane Elliott, a small-town Iowa schoolteacher whose stark, pragmatic lesson about racial discrimination - to prove a point, she treated her students, who were all white, differently according to the color of their eyes - was deeply affecting and deeply divisive.