...as to the comment about this not being the first black man killed in Oakland by Police recently I believe that. I also wonder what the ratio is of police shooting black men in Oakland to black men shooting black men in Oakland.

My guess it's fewer than 1 police shooting to 100 other shootings. Assuming Oakland is anything like Chicago.

It always amazes me how much anger there is in the black community regarding police involved shootings. You can get a dozen reverends and "community leaders" to show up to protest ANY police involved shooting. Whether it is justified or clearly unjustified as this Oakland shooting is.

Yet hold a protest for some dead innocent kid killed by a gangbanger and few show up. Partly it's because other types of shootings are so common I guess. Partly it's because it's easier to focus on the police as being the main problem in the black community and not the fucked up standards that exist among elements in the black community.

I recall Michelle Obama being asked if she feared for Barack's safety. She said something to the effect of "he's a black man, he might get shot at the gas station".

Now there was a comment that everyone hates police worldwide. I agree. There's a reason for that. Human nature. Yet who do folks call when they are in trouble? Who runs to the sound of gunfire while others flee?

"I keep saying this: Michelle, Barack, and my son are not abnormal," Marian Robinson said. "All my relatives, all my friends, all their friends, all their parents, almost all of them have the same story. It's just that their families aren't running for president. It bothers me that people see [Michelle and Barack] as so phenomenal, because there's so much of that in the black neighborhood. They went to the same schools we all did. They went through the same struggles."

"People have never met a Michelle Obama," the soon-to-be first lady said toward the end of our interview. "But what they'll come to learn is that there are thousands and thousands of Michelle and Barack Obamas across America. You just don't live next door to them, or there isn't a TV show about them."

The question, of course, is why African-Americans aren't getting elected in these districts. Racism is undoubtedly part of the answer, but it probably can't be a complete one now that the country has just elected Barack Obama to the White House.

I suspect that a lot of the problem, however, is that as Congressional Districts have become more and more gerrymandered, leading to the creation of more and more majority-minority districts following the 1980 and 1990 censuses, the black political apparatus has become more and more 'ghettoized'. Black candidates have not had to develop a message that appeals to white voters, because most of them don't have very many white voters in their districts (about half the nation's African-American population is limited to the 60 blackest Congressional Districts). Nor do they have very many conservative voters in their districts, and so they have not had to develop a message that appeals to conservatives, even though the black population itself is far more diverse in its political views than is generally acknowledged.

Our goal is to include things that are in widespread use. We don't care about things like whether they are acceptable, ungrammatical, or offensive. There are times when we have many, many words for the same concept. People say, "We don't need conversate, we have converse." Well then,  we don't need hip because we have cool. We don't need illness because we have malady.

There are factors that we look at. They include how widespread something really is. How long has it been around? How broad is its use? A word that's in widespread use in many places is more likely to be included than a word that is only used in a small place but is widespread.

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Let me give you an example, in terms of looking at things historically. At the beginning of this conversation you pronounced the word "ask" as "aks." This is something that people often object to. People say it's the wrong pronunciation, and it's stupid. But if you look at the history of the English language, you can't tell if the correct pronunciation is "aks" or "ask." The "aks" pronunciation goes back 1000 years. It's in Beowulf. It's in Chaucer.

What happened was both were in use. But at some point, the dialect in which the "ask" pronunciation was used became dominant. But both continued and have been in use since then. When you look at America, the "aks" pronunciation is widespread in Southern American English. African-Americans used this because they were in the South--it's not especially African-American, but its Southern.

Now, if you look at other Germanic languages, the "correct" pronunciation is, in fact, "ask"--but you can't tell that looking just at English and it ultimately doesn't matter. If I asked you to name the ordinal number between "second" and "fourth" you'd say, what?

TNC: Third.

JS: Right, third--but the old pronunciation is "thred," it comes from three. But if you were to say thred, you'd be considered a moron--even though it's "correct."

We must reach an agreement with the Palestinians, meaning a withdrawal from nearly all, if not all, of the [occupied] territories. Some percentage of these territories would remain in our hands, but we must give the Palestinians the same percentage [of territory elsewhere]--without this, there will be no peace.

Reid, who lambasted the GOP-led Congress for being a rubber stamp for President Bush, indicated that he will not bow to the Obama administration.

Reid stated, "I don't believe in the executive power trumping everything... I believe in our Constitution, three separate but equal branches of government."

"If Obama steps over the bounds, I will tell him. ... I do not work for Barack Obama. I work with him," he said.

New rule effective immediately: no politician can use the term "lynching" to describe an otherwise routine political impasse. Nor can it be used for low-grade racial conflicts. Between 1880-1910 African Americans were lynched at a rate that averages out to two per week. These were people who were routinely tortured, shot and castrated before being set afire. Being passed over for a job -- even a job you deserve -- just isn't in the same category as recreational murder.

First Clarence Thomas, inventor of the portable crucifix, hailed that he was the target of a hi-tech one (the only lynching to culminate in a guarantee of lifelong employment for the victim) and now every black politician who gets questioned on an expenditure smells kerosene in the air. (And this damn sure doesn't give Bill O'Reilly a pass on reckless lynching references either.)

Bobby Rush knows  (or at some point knew) better than this which is part of what makes the Roland Burris fiasco so frustrating. If Burris is not seated it will not be tantamount to a lynching. But he and Thomas have a surprising degree of common ground on the lynching issue.

Thomas threw out the L-word hoping to cow white Senate Democrats who were on the fence about his nomination. Seventeen years later Rush is tossing the term around pretty much for the same reason. In America, where cynicism is an art form, there's room for a kind of ironic appreciation for the fact that the most horrific element of black history can now be deployed to gain leverage over white politicians. That is, if it didn't consistently undermine the memory of what lynching actually was.

At the end of the day, cynicism is like using a mirror to look at a mirror -- in the reflection of a reflection of a reflection you eventually lose sight of what the real image is.

Israel controls the entrances and exits, as well as access to necessities such as power and water. Mexico has not spent the last three or more years under an American aerial and sea blockade. Moreover, Israel's impressive victory in the Six-Day War turned the West Bank and Gaza into one ethnic unit. In the peace agreement signed by Egypt and Israel in 1979, the Gaza Strip remained in Israel's hands. The Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians, signed in September 1993, determined that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are one political entity. This means that as long as the West Bank is under Israeli occupation, so too is Gaza.

The first time I saw Michelle Obama in the flesh, I almost took her for white. It was late July. Pundits were taking whispered bets on the fate of Hillary Clinton's female supporters. In part to heal the intraparty rift, and in part to raise some cash, Obama was presiding over a Chicago luncheon for Democratic women. They were an opulent, multiracial, mostly middle-aged bunch, in pantsuits and conservative dresses. Clinton-turned-Obama staffer Patti Solis Doyle waved from the floor when she was introduced. One of Clinton's longtime backers appealed for unity. Only a few weeks earlier, Obama had appeared on The View in a striking black-and-white floral dress. Now, throughout the room, some of the women were decked out in their best version of that number. Obama flashed her trademark sense of humor, her long arms cutting the air, as she made her points.

I'd flown into Midway that morning and driven down Lake Shore Drive, with William DeVaughn crooning "Be Thankful for What You Got" in the background. But even as I took in the stately beauty of Michigan Avenue, notions of Michelle Obama were spinning around in my head. I thought of an ecstatic phone call from my sister Kelley: "You have to ask her how she holds it down!" I thought of my Atlanta aunts, partisans of the Alpha Kappa Alpha pink and green, crowing over Obama's acceptance of an honorary membership that same month: "Tell her she made the right choice." I thought of a Chicago homeboy who'd summed her up for me: "Michelle is a six-foot black woman who says what she means."

And then I thought of an image from last February, when Michelle Obama, in a gray sweater and a non-smile, slipped into a box marked Angry Black Woman. "For the first time in my adult life," she had told a Milwaukee rally, "I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback." When I first saw that clip, I could almost hear the trapdoor opening. In that instant, Michelle Obama became a symbol of her husband's otherness. And for much of the rest of the campaign season, the opinion media obsessed over her love--or lack of love--of country.

Now, waiting in that cavernous downtown Hilton ballroom, I did not think I'd find Ida Wells or Stokely Carmichael. I did not expect to see Michelle Obama with her fist in the air, slinging bean pies, or hawking The Final Call. But still, I was unprepared for what I did encounter: Michelle Obama recounting her life as if she were an old stevedore hungering for the long-lost neighborhood of yore.