Racial Politics

The Columbia Association's board of directors is considering extending association President Maggie J. Brown's contract through 2007. Brown is in the third year of her contract, which expires in February next year. Board member Pearl Atkinson-Stewart said the board's management appraisal committee has come to an agreement on Brown's contract that it will announce at tonight's council meeting. "They're very happy with all of the things she's done so far," said Atkinson-Stewart, who chairs the committee.

The Columbia Association's board of directors is considering extending association President Maggie J. Brown's contract through 2007. Brown is in the third year of her contract, which expires in February next year. Board member Pearl Atkinson-Stewart said the board's management appraisal committee has come to an agreement on Brown's contract that it will announce at tonight's council meeting. "They're very happy with all of the things she's done so far," said Atkinson-Stewart, who chairs the committee.

Republican Party leaders denounced state Democratic lawmakers last night for racially tinged criticism made this week of Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele. "Bigoted attacks like these ought to be an affront to any American who agrees with Dr. [Martin Luther] King's goal of a nation where people are judged according to the content of their character, not the color of their skin," said Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, keynote speaker at a state GOP fundraiser at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore.

NEW ORLEANS -- Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton waded into the seas of racial politics yesterday with an appeal to blacks and whites to accept responsibility for racial divisions and to take action to cure them.Borrowing Thomas Jefferson's warning about slavery to call the Los Angeles riots a "fire bell in the night," Mr. Clinton said that Americans "must face our fears and stop running from them. There is no place to hide."In an emotional speech to the Democratic Leadership Council, the Arkansas governor criticized both Republican neglect and Democratic unwillingness to face "the hard truth" about urban violence.

As chilling as it is engrossing, "American Pimp" is an extraordinary document of how racial politics, sexual hypocrisy, individualism and greed have intersected to create an icon of the American underbelly. Allen and Albert Hughes ("Menace II Society," "Dead Presidents") make their nonfiction debut with a lively, compulsively watchable but ultimately sobering film about the men who make their living off prostitution. Interviewing subjects with names like Rosebudd, Fillmore Slim, Charm and Bishop Don Magic Juan, the Hugheses peel the veil from a mysterious corner of American culture, where exploitation and bootstrap capitalism collide with stunning force.

THREE YEARS after the end of its apartheid rule, South Africa's National Party is at a turning point. Its efforts to forge a coalition opposed to Nelson Mandela's African National Congress have failed. Meanwhile, the party is on the verge of self-destruction. It cannot make up its mind about whether it should become a multiracial political organization or continue as the domain of white Afrikaners.Former President F. W. de Klerk still wants to organize a new, broad-based, multi-cultural alliance as an alternative to ANC. But he is against opening the ranks of the National Party to all prospective members, regardless of race.

A federal panel of three judges overturned Georgia's congressional districting scheme last month on the grounds that a district was an unconstitutional "racial gerrymander," drawn with the sole purpose of creating a black majority. Earlier, another federal panel ruled that three Texas districts drawn to facilitate the elections of minority candidates "bear the odious imprint of racial apartheid."Both panels were inspired by the Supreme Court's 1993 decision in a North Carolina case in which Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that a district whose residents have "little in common with one another but the color of their skin bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid."

Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp appears likely to keep her job, despite the efforts of some legislators who were pushing for a change to bring racial diversity to the Board of Public Works, a key panel on which she sits. House Speaker Michael E. Busch - who holds significant influence over the selection of the treasurer - said yesterday that he believes she should stay. "I think Nancy Kopp has done an outstanding job as treasurer of the state of Maryland," Busch said. "She was an outstanding legislator on the appropriations committee and understands the fiscal structure of the state of Maryland.

The Columbia Council voted early yesterday against hiring the only candidate who still wanted to run the town after bitter racial politics helped chase off the two other finalists. At a two-hour, closed-door meeting that began late Thursday and broke up after midnight, the council voted to advertise again for a new Columbia Association president. "I think the process has been so perverted that there's no hope of salvaging it," said Councilman Kirk Halpin of Kings Contrivance. The council is trying to hire someone to fill a job left vacant since May, when Deborah O. McCarty resigned the $130,000-a-year post under pressure.

A longtime Columbia resident who was drawn to the community's dream of racial harmony takes the reins today of a town torn by racial politics. Maggie J. Brown, the Columbia Association's vice president for community services, will become interim president of the homeowners group. She takes over from Charles Rhodehamel, who has been acting president since Deborah O. McCarty resigned under pressure in May. The Columbia Council, the association's legislative arm, unanimously picked Brown at a closed meeting Thursday, when it also voted to scrap a presidential search disrupted by charges of racism.