... speaks total baloney. The expression "acting white" is well documented. You can even find academic papaers on the subject, one done not too long ago by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Now find me a single documented case of a poor kid in Appalacia getting beat up for "acting rich." A single documented case. A single academic study. Ditto for your other pathetic equivocations.

Google it. Basically the "acting white" black kid is a nerd, and he/she is treated like one. I'm sorry to burst that bubble. You seem to need to believe that myth badly.

Can we have a discussion about race without the tired nonsense about making republicans out to be rabid racists.

If republicans are going to use the "you are what you embrace" argument with respect to Barack Obama and Reverend Wright, there is no reason we can't use the same argument against them, Richard Nixon, and the Southern Strategy. The strategy consisted of reaching out to, and embracing, racists. Too bad if the republican chickens have come home to roost. They never disavowed Nixon, they never disavowed Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, they never disavowed those 7 Nazi war criminals in their ethnic outreach program under GWB's father. They don't distance themselves from torturers, they don't disavow the arrests of people exercising their free speech rights in New York City in 2004, they don't disavow Tom DeLay or Scooter Libby. They've put two generations of murderers from the Bush family into office, the second by cheating in two elections.

Why do they have the undeniable right to ask a Democrat to disavow anything at all?

NYT:

Karolyn Tyson, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and William Darity Jr., an economist at Duke and U.N.C., coordinated an 18-month ethnographic study at 11 schools in North Carolina. What they found was that black students basically have the same attitudes about achievement as their white counterparts do: they want to succeed, understand that doing well in school has important consequences in later life and feel better about themselves the better they do.

So where does the idea of the burden of ''acting white'' come from? One explanation the authors offer will make sense to anyone who has ever seen a John Hughes movie: there's an ''oppositional peer culture'' in every high school -- the stoners and the jocks making fun of the nerds and the student-government types. When white burnouts give wedgies to white A students, the authors argue, it is seen as inevitable, but when the same dynamic is observed among black students, it is pathologized as a racial neurosis.

More insidiously, the authors say, the idea that failing black kids pull down successful black kids can be used as an excuse by administrators to conceal or justify discrimination in the public-education system. The one school where the researchers did find anxiety about ''acting white'' was the one in which black students were drastically underrepresented in the gifted-and-talented classes. And significantly, at this particular school, the notion of the burden of ''acting white'' was most pervasive not among the black students interviewed by the researchers, but among their teachers and administrators, who told researchers that blacks are ''averse to success'' and ''don't place a high value on education.''

To everyone complaining that Rev. Wright is getting too much bad press, being lynched, etc. you are barking up the wrong tree. The problem is not Wright, its Obama. Wright is a pastor, he is free to preach what he wants, he is not running for President. Obama, on the other hand, is running for President, and to have accepted Wright's doctrine without question for years, and to have made his race speech only after the tapes and the controversy came out, have damaged him irreparably for the general election. His aura of being a healer, of being a uniter is completely shattered. He needed to have made that speech BEFORE the Wright tapes came out. He is now the black candidate, trying to convince the nation HE is not a hater of whites and of America. He may well convince most people that he isn't but it will take time and political capital and resources he could have employed elsewhere. Obama is now just another candidate, the mystique is gone. That is the true cost to his candidacy. And it's not the fault of the media or Hillary or Republicans, it's 100% Obama's.

You say: "By the way, the "acting white" thing, while it happens, is very overblown, and is one of the fave tropes of people like "old punk"."

Sorry, but you're dead wrong on this one - it happened a great deal in New Orleans to the deep dismay of many public school teachers and to the enormous detriment of thousands of black kids who might well have been able to pull themselves up and out of poverty and thus escape a probable future in prison.

Besides, have you already conveniently forgotten the "not black enough" judgment rendered on Obama - before SC? Gosh, where did that one come from? Another fave trope?

It's pretty apparent that very few posters on this site have any real world knowledge of black life in America, other than those who actually are black. It's also pretty apparent that those who have the least knowledge are the quickest to hand out the most scathing judgments on matters racial.

Hillary Clinton and her supporters need to recognize the indelible writing on the wall and, if they won't back out and shift support for Obama, at least hold fire on the personal attacks upon him. For any Clinton supporter apparently such as yourself to continue to propagate this fraudulent, unfair, and despicable narrative against Obama regarding his former pastor is not only shameful but self-defeating.

Is this the latest meme from Obama's camp? That Clinton supporters are propagating "fraudulent, unfair and despicable narrative against Obama"?

While you may not be one of the anti-Clinton posters on this board, I could point to hundreds of "fraudulent, unfair and despicable" narratives against Clinton that continue to be propagated by liberals within our own party, particularly in the "progressive" blogosphere.

Hold fire on the personal attacks against Obama? I understand that you are in Obama's camp. But how about "holding fire on the personal attacks" against Hillary Clinton? I don't see you -- or any of Obama's followers -- taking on those personal attacks.

Whatever you believe: the numbers are against Clinton, the delegates are against Clinton, the superdelegates are against Clinton, the polls are against Clinton, etc., I think you need to understand that this race is hardly over. It is becoming increasingly obvious to me -- and other Clinton supporters -- that this line of reasoning always heats up to near-hysterical levels the minute that Clinton taks a commanding lead and the momentum shifts in her favor. It's disingenuous. I have pointed out that Clinton has many factors working in her favor at the moment, not the least of which are her widening leads in states with upcoming primaries and caucuses.

I don't presume to speak for AKA Smith -- she does that quite admirably without my help. However, from my own vantage point, I believe that the questions about Obama's pastor -- and his 20-year relationship with him (up to and including his service as part of Obama's "spiritual" team), in addition to questions about his connections with Antoin Rezko and Emil Jones, and questions about Obama's refusal to do anything to resolve the plight of Rezko's "slum" residents by raising the issue with his "friend", along with the Chicago-style politics Obama used to oust his competition in his state Senate run and his 2004 U.S. Senate run, raise serious and substantive questions about his credibility vis-a-vis "new politics", and raise substantive questions about his judgment.

There are people on these boards -- AKA Smith among them -- who raise some pretty damned informative points and questions about Obama, and often in the midst of some of the most horrendous name-calling and vitriol perpetrated by Obama's followers.