THIS WEEK marks the first guest blog that we have posted. Ann Fisher is a senior political science student at North Central College and a multi-year participant in the college's Model United Nations program. Her research interests center on race and politics, as well as international relations. It’s time to face it; Barack Obama was not just a skinny kid with a funny name. He was a skinny, black kid with a funny, African and Muslim name. These adjectives completely change the perspective with which we look at him. So when Sarah Palin claims that he is “palling around ...

It is about to get nasty. With John McCain slipping quickly in the polls (both nationally and in key states – McCain’s campaign announced THIS WEEK that they were conceding Michigan), we are bracing for the most racially-charged rhetoric and advertisements to surface in the coming days and weeks. Here is what to look for:

1. We certainly haven’t seen the end of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Since the high-profile release of snippets of selected sermons by Rev. Wright this spring, there has been almost no mention of him in the mainstream press. But conservative radio hosts bring him up

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In the past two years, we have received our fair share of critical comments. THIS WEEK, though, a new trend has emerged: some of our most thoughtful readers have begun to question (publicly and privately) our commentary. We are thankful for their honesty – thankful that they felt comfortable confronting our assertions and trying to keep us grounded.Two things might account for this shift, and they are not mutually exclusive. First, it might be that conservatives have been so effective in pushing a position that any racial messages in the campaign are the “fault” of progressives and the Obama ...