Read about the Michael Mineo and the LATEST INCIDENT OF POLICE BRUTALITY.

Take a look at the TOP 5 WORST NYPD BRUTALITY MOMENTS.

According to a USA Today poll published today, two-thirds of Americans-far more than the 53% who actually voted for Obama -describe themselves as “proud” and “optimistic.”

This optimism extends to the future of race relations. Among blacks, the number who believe America will “eventually” work out “relations” jumped to 67%, up from 50% five months ago.

It is impossible to overstate the significance of Obama’s win. Among other things, it is the first major political victory experienced (and largely wrought) by the hip-hop generation. Like the victories won by the previous generation-the passing of Roe v. Wade, the end of American involvement in Vietnam, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts-it has the potential to galvanize us for years to come.

Our landmark experiences, until now, have largely been losses and setbacks: the Rodney King verdict, the Amadou Diallo shooting. Psychologically and emotionally, the memory of Obama’s victory will be something to store away for inspiration, for our children and ourselves.

And yet, the backlash we knew to expect is here too.

Obama’s win is already being trumpeted by conservatives as proof that racism is no longer an issue-or, as they would have it, an “excuse.” Before the electoral results were even tallied, William Bennett was spinning them ceaselessly on CNN; the next morning, the Manhattan Institute’s John McWhorter picked up the baton.

A friend of mine, a black academic, reports that no less than two middle-aged white men started conversations with him on an Amtrak ride from Ohio to Boston the morning after Election Day. Both of them advanced the theory that Obama’s election constituted proof of a new “post-racial” America.

Why, if it is so post-racial, they felt the need to talk to a black man about it, is unclear. One might also wonder why they both picked the best-dressed black man on the train to address their remarks to-and I feel certain they didn’t also strike up chats with any doo-ragged black teenagers.

Obama’s election presents us with a singular opportunity for progress, but it will have to happen not just on the level of spectacle (though the sight of the president-elect’s beautiful daughters walking across the Grant Park stage with their father, and the thought that these girls will be part of America’s new public face, was as moving as anything else about Tuesday night). Progress must also come on the level of policy.

More important than the symbolic renewal his presidency represents for a badly-diminished America is the question of what he will do to end the epic incarceration of black men, revamp an educational system that re-inscribes racial and economic disparities, and address institutional bias in all its insidious and well-quantified forms.

Certainly, Obama’s victory should make us optimistic, but we must also quickly return fire when the Bennetts and McWhorters of the world make use of it to further their project of obscuring structural racism.

And when giddy white liberals use it as an excuse to continue ignoring the realities of racism, we must be swift in explaining that nothing has yet been solved-and do our best to alchemize their excitement into a commitment to recognizing and fighting against institutional prejudice.

But even the ‘post-race’ backlash presents possibilities.

Professional talking heads like Bennett and McWhorter are simply continuing to do what they do, but for rank-and-file whites to strike up conversations about racism-or even the alleged vanishing thereof-is something new. For this sentiment to be aired publicly, whether it is long-held or newly acquired, is a good thing.

It may not be intended to incite dialogue, much less disagreement, but it does offer an opportunity for an empirical response: No, Obama’s election is not proof that racism is over, and here’s why. Given the tremendous atmosphere of goodwill now suffusing the country, it is a conversation that might actually get somewhere.

Watch Bill Bennett spin Obama’s victory on CNN:

Adam Mansbach is the author of the novels The End of the Jews and Angry Black White Boy. He is the New Voices Professor of Fiction at Rutgers University.

Why, then, should a toothless, absurd plot against him by a pair of white supremacists get so much attention in the final days before the election?

Certainly, the plot hatched by 20-year-old Daniel Cowart of Bells, Tennessee and eighteen-year-old Paul Schlesselman of Helena-West Helena, Arkansas is disturbing; violence fueled by hatred always is. That these two young men were willing to die for the sake of killing Obama is chilling, as is the ideology behind their plan.

But the plan itself, which involved killing eighty-eight blacks, fourteen by beheading-numbers that reference white supremacist numerology-and then driving toward Obama, wearing white tuxedos and top hats and firing guns out their car windows-was clearly not something the two men had any ability to execute. A home invasion they planned to obtain money to finance the plot was aborted when the two would-be assassins were scared off by a dog.

So why has it dominated news coverage? Perhaps the attention is given because it has the potential to swing votes. With McCain’s campaign in tatters, the GOP and its surrogates have to do something. The plot-which right-leaning FOX News was early to break and late to stop flogging-reminds voters that Obama is black. Calling him a socialist hasn’t worked. Nor has labeling him a ‘redistributionist,” a pal of terrorists, a “street operative.”

Time to go back to the basics: Obama is black. He’s Other. He’s from the America that’s not the “real” one, to paraphrase Sarah Palin’s recent rallying cry.

Sound stupid? It is.

Obama’s race has hardly been obscured in this election season. But this plot underlines it in neon-and if it gets enough coverage, maybe it galvanizes a few racists to go to the polls, or subconsciously makes a few voters who’ve decided that a candidate’s policies are more important than his skin color rethink.

It’s not so different, in that sense, from last week’s top FOX News story about the McCain volunteer assaulted by a 6’4″ black mugger who then carved a “B” for Barack into her face.

Until it turned out she had made the whole thing up.

The other group this assassination plot could affect, paradoxically, is black Obama supporters afraid for the candidate’s life-fearful that like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and both Kennedys, this avatar of hope does not have long to live, and electing him president will shorten his life.

Whether either of these effects is felt at the voting booth remains to be seen. But this plot, both farcical and frightening, seems destined to be little more than an election footnote: one more news item that couldn’t hold back the tide of Obama’s momentum, no matter how much dubious attention it commanded.

Watch Obama ‘pal around with terrorists’ here:

Morale is said to be low at campaign headquarters, with top advisors concerned primarily with sidestepping the blame for the presumed impending defeat. This early round of the blame game is yet another example of the lack of discipline that has characterized McCain’s campaign.

It is no surprise that the mood inside a campaign down seven points nationally and outflanked in almost every swing state-a campaign forced to spend furiously in defense of states they didn’t even think would be in play-is acrimonious. But it’s laughable that the McCain brain trust can’t even bicker quietly enough to avoid handing the Democrats yet another advantage.

A sinking-ship mentality will only hurt Republican voter turnout, something the party can ill afford.

In presidential politics, the party’s standard-bearer has obligations beyond his own campaign. He’s at the top of a ticket that also includes candidates for the Senate, for the House of Representatives, for state and local office. His turnout is their turnout. And his money is their money-the portion of it that comes from the party, anyway.

When Bob Dole realized he wasn’t going to unseat Bill Clinton in 1996, he diverted resources from his campaign to those of others running for office. Dole lost, but the Republicans picked up two seats in the Senate, and managed to retain a majority in the House.

The “Country First” candidate, on the other hand, doesn’t even appear to be putting his party ahead of himself. McCain’s only “October surprise” has been to veer even further off-message, blitzing Obama with as many as twelve simultaneous lines of attack in a desperate attempt to find one that sticks-from breathless accusations of “socialism” to recycled efforts to link him to Bill Ayers.

It’s as if nobody at McCain headquarters reads the polls: even as voters recoiled from negative tactics and demanded economic solutions, McCain amped up his attacks. As Obama’s team demonstrated its mastery of the electoral playing field by exploiting early voting and forcing McCain to spend heavily in states once considered safely red, the GOP candidate pulled his ads in swing states like Colorado and Nevada-all but conceding them.

And he let the media pick up on it, further dampening Republican spirits.

Looking back over the McCain campaign, one gets the feeling that the last words spoken at the conference table before each major decision were “f*@$ it, whatever,” uttered in the tone of a desperate gambler going all-in on a risky bet.

Should we go with Sarah Palin, despite her extremist views, lack of qualifications, ongoing criminal investigation and lack of vetting? Might be a game-changer… “f*@$ it, whatever.” How about we respond to the financial crisis by suspending the campaign? Could that work? “I dunno.. f*@$ it, whatever.”

Even in a divided nation beset by financial woe, it is uplifting to consider that, at long last, someone seems to have failed by overestimating the stupidity of the American public.

This time around, political smokescreens and stagey diversions have not worked.
Let us hope that it is not just McCain’s campaign that we can begin to autopsy on November 5th, but such tactics themselves.

The Alaskan governor, added to the ticket because cocky McCain operatives believed anyone with XX chromosomes could vie for Hillary Clinton’s supporters, has proved as incapable of swinging women voters as she has of telling Katie Couric how Alaska’s proximity to Russia qualifies as foreign policy experience. Her only traction comes from the conservative base, and thus, she has been redeployed to the heartland, where warmed-over attacks on Obama’s tenuous connections to Bill Ayers still spark fire.

It should come as no shock that Palin’s rallies have gotten ugly. Everything she stands for is ugly, from her abuse of executive power (confirmed by the bipartisan panel investigating Troopergate) to the ease with which she distorts the public record (her own and others). But even given the level of national tension, given the rancor endemic to late-stage presidential campaigns, the recent reports of crowd members calling for Obama’s death go beyond the pale.

Outbursts like those we’ve seen in recent weeks-including the racial epithets shouted at a black cameraman- are not spontaneous. They are the result of a constant campaign of polarization, an endless barrage of misinformation.

And when the time is ripe, “everyone” knows who is “ruining” America: blacks and Jews with their secret radical agendas; gays who want rights; immigrants stealing American jobs; liberals who want to outlaw guns and religion and mandate abortions; and of course, greedy Wall Street fat cats-despite the two hundred million dollar tax cut McCain-Palin want to give them.

Many have sounded alarms, warning that this is how fascism starts. Those alarms do need to be sounded, something even the morally defunct McCain campaign acknowledged when the Senator called for his supporters to tone down things down. But fascism starts well before political rallies turn bloodthirsty and the political pit bulls snarl.

Ignorant rally-goers stoked by the negativity of a fever-pitch campaign are an easy target.  And certainly, we need to be militant against hate speech whenever and wherever it is heard. But if we focus on the foot soldiers, we will fail to pull back the curtain on the generals and military strategists running the ‘culture war.’

They are not Joe Sixpack and his Hockey Mom wife, and they don’t live on Main Street.  They are hatemongering pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. More importantly, they are politicians like John McCain, who depend on “experts” like the aforementioned to convince Americans that the country has been overrun by liberals- despite eight years of George W. Bush and his disastrous policies.

Or Sarah Palin, who may not be able to tell Katie Couric what newspapers she reads, but now that she’s cornered, will say anything to work her pit bulls into an angry, racist frenzy.

One might very well ask why it is not a holiday, as it is across most of Europe. Considering what’s at stake when Americans go to the polls, you might wonder why it is that we’re expected to complete the task most critical to the functioning of our democracy during our lunch breaks, or report to our polling places after work and brave mile-long lines and dropping temperatures in order to cast our ballots.

This election has become a referendum on who better understands the problems of the ‘middle class’ and the residents of ‘main street,’ and yet the absurd circumstances under which so many working people must attempt to vote has not been made an issue.

A more striking non-issue, though, is the reality of poverty in this country. The poor have been absolutely erased from this campaign’s public discourse. We hear endlessly about the middle class, the Joe Sixpacks, the hockey moms. Sarah Palin invokes imagined conversations on the sidelines of children’s soccer games to prove that she understands economic woe. Joe Biden retorts with an equally fanciful stroll through Home Depot.

To hear both halves of both tickets talk, you’d think there were two classes of Americans: greedy Wall Street tycoons, and salt-of-the-earth members of the middle class.

But what about the poor?

Not the homeowners facing foreclosure or the former employees of Lehman Brothers, but those living below the poverty line, those getting by on government assistance, those unable to afford the basic necessities of life?

There are several reasons that the poor go unmentioned, even at a time of economic crisis-a crisis that threatens to destroy the lives of those barely hanging on just as surely as the lives of those a few rungs up the economic ladder.

One reason is that the candidate who addressed poverty most directly in this election cycle was John Edwards. Perhaps the Obama campaign fears to evoke him, even indirectly, given the former Senator’s infidelity scandal. This is a lame reason, to be sure, but a plausible partial one. Another is the perception that the poor don’t vote in large numbers, and thus are not worth pandering to.

The most interesting reason, though, and probably the most important, is that people in this country do not self-identify as poor. Americans are aspirational, to the point of delusion, and thus we consider ourselves ‘middle class’ even when we’re far from it.

And thus, to mention the poor is to court disdain-even from the poor.

This is why the Republican Party ¬has been so successful over the years at getting people to vote against their own economic self-interest. We like the idea of being courted by the party of the wealthy; it makes us feel better about our prospects.

Certainly, the Democratic agenda demonstrates far more concern for the most needy Americans, from issues like health care and taxes to primary school education and job programs.

But both parties adopt a rhetoric that solves poverty by obscuring it rather confronting it.
And by indulging in the same politics of exclusion, both parties enable the victims of poverty to do the same.

What the hell is your problem?! Do you realize that the presidential campaign has now been going on for almost two years?

Wait, let me guess: you’ve been standing in the cereal aisle at your local supermarket since several weeks before the Iowa Caucus, trying to decide what to eat for breakfast, evaluating the health and nutrition claims printed on the boxes of Fruit Loops and All-Bran. (They both make some interesting points, I know.)

Sorry. Forgive me. You may have detected a bit of sarcasm in my tone, Mr. and Mrs. Swing Voter, as perceptive as you are. It’s just that I sometimes wonder what’s going on in those heads of yours. Everybody I know has pretty much made up their minds about who to support at this point, what with the endless reams of information about the parties, the candidates, the parties thrown by the candidates. (All of it is available, incidentally, in newspapers and magazines and on the radio and the television and the Internet, nonstop and around the clock).

And yet, not only have you not made up your mind, but the entire election is going to hinge on people like you—by definition, some of the most ignorant citizens of this nation! Ha! Ha! How hilarious is that? Only in America, right?

Who would’ve thought that just by virtue of living in a particularly contested state and being totally disengaged in the political process (or, maybe, just being a really, really careful shopper), you’d be in a position to decide the outcome of the election, and therefore, the path this country takes at one of the most crucial junctures in our entire history? Certainly not you!

You may not even be aware of what state you live in! Check your cable bill. Those two letters that come after your town—they’re short for the name of your state! You can also check the license plates of your cars, when you decide on your cereal and leave the supermarket!

You know, Mr. and Mrs. Swing Voter, in many ways I envy you. I really do. For almost two years now, I’ve been following this campaign religiously. At this point, I’m utterly sick to my stomach: the lies, the pageantry, the misdirection, the rhetoric, the endless manipulation and, of course, the irony—because none of it is directed at me! Funny, huh?!

I understand the substance of what both John McCain and Barack Obama actually propose to do on issues like the war in Iraq, the economy, health care, and education, and so I’ve made up my mind. All this information, all these commercials and speeches and interviews, they’re all directed at you. And you’re not even listening! Ha! Ha! Ha! You’ve GOTTA love it! In fact, you’re not even reading this right now!!!

So, thanks for such discerning taste. Breakfast and America just wouldn’t be the same without you.

What the hell is your problem?! Do you realize that the presidential campaign has now been going on for almost two years?
Wait, let me guess: you’ve been standing in the cereal aisle at your local supermarket since several weeks before the Iowa Caucus, trying to decide what to eat for breakfast, evaluating the health and nutrition claims printed on the boxes of Fruit Loops and All-Bran. (They both make some interesting points, I know.)

Sorry. Forgive me. You may have detected a bit of sarcasm in my tone, Mr. and Mrs. Swing Voter, as perceptive as you are. It’s just that I sometimes wonder what’s going on in those heads of yours. Everybody I know has pretty much made up their minds about who to support at this point, what with the endless reams of information about the parties, the candidates, the parties thrown by the candidates. (All of it is available, incidentally, in newspapers and magazines and on the radio and the television and the Internet, nonstop and around the clock).

And yet, not only have you not made up your mind, but the entire election is going to hinge on people like you—by definition, some of the most ignorant citizens of this nation! Ha! Ha! How hilarious is that? Only in America, right?

Who would’ve thought that just by virtue of living in a particularly contested state and being totally disengaged in the political process (or, maybe, just being a really, really careful shopper), you’d be in a position to decide the outcome of the election, and therefore, the path this country takes at one of the most crucial junctures in our entire history? Certainly not you!

You may not even be aware of what state you live in! Check your cable bill. Those two letters that come after your town—they’re short for the name of your state! You can also check the license plates of your cars, when you decide on your cereal and leave the supermarket!

You know, Mr. and Mrs. Swing Voter, in many ways I envy you. I really do. For almost two years now, I’ve been following this campaign religiously. At this point, I’m utterly sick to my stomach: the lies, the pageantry, the misdirection, the rhetoric, the endless manipulation and, of course, the irony—because none of it is directed at me! Funny, huh?!

I understand the substance of what both John McCain and Barack Obama actually propose to do on issues like the war in Iraq, the economy, health care, and education, and so I’ve made up my mind.  All this information, all these commercials and speeches and interviews, they’re all directed at you. And you’re not even listening! Ha! Ha! Ha! You’ve GOTTA love it! In fact, you’re not even reading this right now!!!

So, thanks for such discerning taste. Breakfast and America just wouldn’t be the same without you.
Adam Mansbach is the author of the novels Angry Black White Boy and The End of the Jews.

This tendency reaches its apex in hip-hop, and it’s regrettable. That a culture built on innovation and competition should be quick to dismiss those who fall off makes sense. But what it means in practical terms is that we limit our own enjoyment; we box ourselves in. In the process, the people who’ve earned the right to have voices in the culture lose the opportunity to speak.

Just as importantly, we deny ourselves the experience of watching our artists grow into themselves, which can be fascinating—as fans of Nas or Miles Davis or Philip Roth or James Baldwin or Pablo Picasso will tell you. Granted, hip-hop has always been a young man’s game. However, where does that leave the young men (and women) who got in it at twelve, and have more to say—and enhanced skills at saying it—at 29, or 35, or 50?

It’s no coincidence that our most-beloved MCs are the ones who were killed before they had the chance to fall off; they present us with uncompromised self-portraits. Even the consensus-greats who are still with us are confined to their moments of influence, and then ignored. Like Armstrong in the ‘50s, they may be at the top of their games today, but the average fan—and even the hardcore acolyte, the type who likes to complain about how much better everything was in ’88, or ’93—wouldn’t know it.

Rakim was rhyming better in the late ‘90s than he was when he changed the game in 1986. X-Clan’s Brother J (a perpetually underappreciated master, in my book) sounds as good right now as he did on his first album, in 1990. Nevertheless, with rare exceptions —like the transformation of KMD’s Zev Love X into MF Doom—there are no second acts in hip-hop. We shake our heads sadly at the first sign of weakness, and then we never check for our favorite artists again.

Don’t we owe it to Big Daddy Kane to know what music he’s created in the past two years? If we’re going to keep putting KRS-One (and Grandmaster Caz, and Melle Mel and Kool Moe Dee) at or near the top of our Greatest MCs lists, shouldn’t we check out his new album, or at least go to his show? If we think Public Enemy made the most important political music of the 20th century, shouldn’t we still be checking for what Chuck D has to say?

And if we are going to cry ourselves to sleep at night because we miss the unfettered creativity of Showbiz & AG, Black Sheep, Das EFX, Hieroglyphics and Brand Nubian, I believe we owe it to ourselves to at least occasionally check in with each to see what their new music sounds like?

Click here to watch Brand Nubian’s most recent single, Young Son:

profound. But the truth of the matter is that Pops was playing his horn better in the 1950s than he was as a young man. Those contributions go almost entirely ignored. The culture had moved on.

This tendency reaches its apex in hip-hop, and it’s regrettable. That a culture built on innovation and competition should be quick to dismiss those who fall off makes sense. But what it means in practical terms is that we limit our own enjoyment; we box ourselves in. In the process, the people who’ve earned the right to have voices in the culture lose the opportunity to speak.

Just as importantly, we deny ourselves the experience of watching our artists grow into themselves, which can be fascinating—as fans of Nas or Miles Davis or

Philip Roth or James Baldwin or Pablo Picasso will tell you. Granted, hip-hop has always been a young man’s game. However, where does that leave the young men (and women) who got in it at twelve, and have more to say—and enhanced skills at saying it—at 29, or 35, or 50?

It’s no coincidence that our most-beloved MCs are the ones who were killed before they had the chance to fall off; they present us with uncompromised self-portraits. Even the consensus-greats who are still with us are confined to their moments of influence, and then ignored. Like Armstrong in the ‘50s, they may be at the top of their games today, but the average fan—and even the hardcore acolyte, the type who likes to complain about how much better everything was in ’88, or ’93—wouldn’t know it.

Rakim was rhyming better in the late ‘90s than he was when he changed the game in 1986. X-Clan’s Brother J (a perpetually underappreciated master, in my book) sounds as good right now as he did on his first album, in 1990. Nevertheless, with rare exceptions —like the transformation of KMD’s Zev Love X into MF Doom—there are no second acts in hip-hop. We shake our heads sadly at the first sign of weakness, and then we never check for our favorite artists again.

Don’t we owe it to Big Daddy Kane to know what music he’s created in the past two years? If we’re going to keep putting KRS-One (and Grandmaster Caz, and Melle Mel and Kool Moe Dee) at or near the top of our Greatest MCs lists, shouldn’t we check out his new album, or at least go to his show? If we think Public Enemy made the most important political music of the 20th century, shouldn’t we still be checking for what Chuck D has to say?

And if we are going to cry ourselves to sleep at night because we miss the unfettered creativity of Showbiz & AG, Black Sheep, Das EFX, Hieroglyphics and Brand Nubian, I believe we owe it to ourselves to at least occasionally check in with each to see what their new music sounds like?

Click here to watch Brand Nubian’s most recent single, Young Son:

Somehow, we’re expected to believe, Obama is both an elitist ‘celebrity’ (as former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani put it at the Republican Convention) and a nefarious, drug-dealing ‘street operative,’ as Jerome Corsi’s odious book The Obama Nation argues. Both a cagey, indecisive careerist and a secret Muslim extremist. Both an inexperienced neophyte and an establishment insider.

But most troubling—and revealing, and farcical —is the newest Republican strategy, trotted out by both Giuliani and vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin: making fun of Obama for working as a community organizer. Palin, the self-described “pitbull in lipstick” (not to be confused with the rapper Eve, a “pitbull in a skirt”), lunged at Obama in her acceptance speech by saying her job as a small-town mayor was “a lot like being a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.”

Cue the rollicking laughter of the whitest convention hall in America. (2% of the GOP’s delegates are black this year, as opposed to 24% of the Democrats’.)

But why is the GOP so scornful of community organizers? Is this simply a line that sounds good if you don’t know what it means, because “community” sounds a little like “Communist,” and organizing sounds vaguely… radical? Is this a reprise of the 1988 election, when George H.W. Bush accused Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis of being “a card-carrying member of the ACLU,” a charge that struck fear into the hearts of millions who had no idea what those four letters stood for—but who associated the term ‘card-carrying’ with the Communist purges of the 1950s?

In part, it is. But it’s also an attack on the kind of idealism that makes a young man who could do anything in the world decide to try to improve the lives of poor people, at a salary of 10,000 dollars a year. It mocks the notion that politics can work from the ground up, and it erases the fact the real, tangible change comes from community activism: that laws have been changed, neighborhoods revitalized and rights defended by community organizers and the people they’ve organized.

It belittles some of the most important people working on the ground in cities and towns all across the country—most of whom harbor no political ambitions whatsoever, and merely want to see things improve for their families and neighbors. It also demeans some of the greatest heroes in the American pantheon. What was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., if not a community organizer?

Yesterday, the McCain campaign backpedaled, with spokesman Tucker Bounds acknowledging that “community organizers serve a valued function in civic affairs.” But next-day equivocations count far less than prime-time laugh lines. The McCain campaign has shown America where it stands, and it’s certainly not with the people.

Watch a NewsOne exclusive on GOP negativity:

Watch Jay Smooth’s video blog about GOP beef:

But what, really, does it mean to be a ‘hip-hop mayor?’ For that matter, what does it mean to be a hip-hop teacher, parent, or businessman?

This becomes an important question as ‘hip-hop’ is evoked to describe an ever-broadening range of activities, occupations, mindstates, and artistic endeavors. We have ‘hip-hop novels’ and ‘hip-hop theater,’ the ‘Hip-Hop Political Convention’ and even ‘hip-hop churches.’ In many cases, the tag is merely a marketing handle, an attempt to convince certain demographic groups to partake. Depending on the product and the context, these groups range from black urban adults to white suburban teenagers.

But ‘hip-hop’ can and should mean more. And redefining and reclaiming the term before it becomes meaningless is crucial.

Language is always a battlefield; the way we define a word circumscribes the very way we think. Already, ‘hip-hop’ has come to signify, in the eyes of many, a form of music characterized by misogyny and materialism, cartoonish and violent and immoral. For those of us who know better, educating the public on hip-hop’s structural precepts and its roots in social protest is the first step toward a truer definition.

The culture’s four foundational artforms —rapping, deejaying, b-boying and graffiti—are linked by a number of desires and artistic pillars. Among these are a love of democratic, merit-based, freewheeling collage (whether verbal, sonical, kinetic or visual), a need to forge community and claim space in the face of depravation, and an absolute genius in re-imagining what art itself could look and sound like, and what it could achieve.

(This is, of course, a partial and incomplete list. For a deeper look at hip-hop theory, check out my essay “On Lit Hop”—then buy the book it’s from, Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop Culture.

What, then, is an individual, an institution, or a movement that claims ‘hip-hop’ required to do? Let’s go back to the notion of a hip-hop mayor. Such an individual’s philosophy of government would honor hip-hop’s principles by seeking to privilege and amplify marginalized voices. In particular, such a government would be concerned with the young, the poor, and people of color—i.e., the people who invented hip-hop.

A hip-hop mayor would replicate hip-hop’s philosophy of collage—which threw whatever was hot into the mix regardless of where it came from, from James Brown to Kraftwerk to Billy Squire—by seeking out and recognizing good ideas (and idea-generators) regardless of location, philosophy, or any other ideological impediment.

She would approach civic issues, from crime prevention to renewable energy, with the same audacious, outside-the-box inventiveness that led Bronx teenagers to dream up backspinning records and writing their names on subway trains.

She would realize that in hip-hop, as in other great American inventions from jazz to baseball, the individual could achieve greatness only when the community supporting her is healthy and intact. She would understand that even visionary ideas—like hip-hop, and democracy itself—can easily be derailed when the principles on which they’re founded recede into the past. She would understand that ‘battles’ are important, but that they must be conducted within the boundaries of respect.

She would not, however, wear this hat.

Adam Mansbach’s latest novel is The End of the Jews (Spiegel & Grau/Doubleday).

The future Hall of Fame slugger was traded from the Boston Red Sox to the Los Angeles Dodgers two weeks ago. Thus far, he has failed to make good on a promise to his new manager, Joe Torre, to trim the dreadlocks hanging halfway down his back—unless you count last week’s trim.

Ramirez, born and bred in Washington Heights, is nearly as renown for his eccentricities—the behavior dubbed “Manny Being Manny” in Boston—as he is for being the best right-handed hitter of his generation. He once cut off a throw from center fielder Johnny Damon, which is never something you want your left fielder doing. He’s been known to retreat into the scoreboard during pitching changes, high-five fans in the middle of plays, and mises games with dubious injuries. After a hugely productive, intermittently tumultuous eight years with the Red Sox, Manny essentially forced a trade by making himself a huge distraction.

Sports are a fascinating site of American social history, the battlefield of race and class made literal. Often, they presage or parallel political movements.

Seven years before Brown vs. the Board of Education outlawed school segregation, Jackie Robinson re-integrated baseball. That’s right, re-integrated. During Reconstruction—a period which also saw the election of more black senators than the entire 20^th century—blacks and whites played together in the International League, which became the National League. Moses “Fleet” Walker was both the first and last black player to take the field.

From Jack Johnson to Muhammad Ali, Hank Greenberg to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, athletes have been lightning rods for society’s feelings about equality and change. Their impact is not necessarily because they were politically outspoken, either; in a world of limited opportunity, being visible was often enough. William Rhoden (Forty Million Dollar Slaves) and Dave Zirin (What’s My Name, Fool) are among those who have written brilliantly on the subject.

As sports go, so goes society. Today, franchises are billion-dollar enterprises, and top athletes enjoy (or don’t) visibility and salaries on a par with movie stars. Only sixty years ago, Ted Williams (another great Red Sox leftfielder) was the only player on the team who could afford not to take a job in the off-season. Sixty years before that, ballplayers were considered ruffians, unwelcome at the better hotels. (The Glory of Their Times, a collection of interviews with players from the 1870s-1930s, is a must-read about the game’s early days).

The corporatization of baseball has given us cookie-cutter players, their individuality leached away by an industry that grooms them from early adolescence, pays them exorbitant salaries, and expects complete obedience in return.

On many teams, this extends all the way to personal grooming. When the Red Sox traded the aforementioned Damon to the hated Yankees in 2005, the pain of seeing a favorite player go was muted considerably because the guy we loved—bearded, longhaired, looking like he’d recently discovered fire—was soon no more. After a forced shave-and-haircut, Damon became almost indistinguishable from teammates like Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter.

All of this is why Ramirez’s hair matters—especially the one dread dyed Rastafarian red-gold-and-green. This is a question of identity. Not Manny’s, but America’s. Are we going to be a melting pot, or a mixing bowl? Must we sacrifice our individuality for the sake of the team, the country, or will we celebrate what makes each one of us unique?

Baseball was once a social experiment, every team a wild mix of ‘rubes’ straight off their families’ farms and inner city kids, hard-drinking lifers and gullible rookies, all of them traveling the country together and eking out a living for the love of the game.

Many old-time Hall of Famers would never even be invited to spring training today. Modern teams would never accept the eccentricities of a pitcher like Rube Waddell, who won 300-plus games despite a love of fire engines so extreme that he sometimes left the mound to chase them down—and remained AWOL for days. They’d have an equally tough time with the, shall we say, performance-diminishing beverages that fueled Hack Wilson, who still holds the single-season record for RBIs and who once described his hitting technique as “aiming for the middle ball.”

It’s not that the game is any less diverse today—if anything, it is more so, full of Latin stars and Japanese imports. And yet ballplayers seem more the same than ever. They must be colorless, in every sense of the word, to survive the game’s corporate culture.

Ramirez is one of the few players left who refuses to conform, who doesn’t seem to be contemplating his stock portfolio or endorsement deals (or, to be fair, anything whatsoever) when he stands in the outfield. And while a man salaried at million a year might seem like a dubious populist hero, baseball is still a mirror of America. Manny Being Manny symbolizes our last best hope of being free.

Adam Mansbach’s novels include The End of the Jews and Angry Black White Boy.

When former Vice Presidential candidate, Geraldine Ferraro made the remarks to which she refers in her May 30 Boston Globe op-ed, pundits and commentators across the ideological spectrum consistently fell all over themselves to avoid accusing her of racism.  Seldom in political life has the sinner been granted so much immediate distance from her sin.

What Ferraro actually said bears little resemblance to the facile pseudo-summary she offers in her editorial. Her comments were not about “the influence of blacks” on the Obama campaign.  Her exact words to a California newspaper were “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position,” and she defended them by arguing that she, likewise, would not have been on the 1984 Democratic ticket if not for her gender.

Ferraro appeared not to recognize the obvious difference between being appointed to a ticket, as she was, and winning a record number of primary votes across the entire nation, as Obama has.  In the days following her initial remarks, she claimed, as in her Boston Globe op-ed, that “Racism works in two different directions. I really think they’re attacking me because I’m white. How’s that?”

Ludicrous-and sad. Ferraro has officially ruined her own obituary by adding a crimson asterisk of aggressively divisive, ill-informed, race-baiting to her own trailblazing career in public service.   More important than assessing the magnitude of her self-destruction, though, is examining the notion she puts forth: that whites in America have been rendered voiceless, that “you can’t open your mouth without being labeled a racist,” that to be black is to be ‘lucky’ (to paraphrase another of her comments about Obama).

I have no problem believing that people have been stopping Ferraro – although I suspect ‘sidling up to’ would be more accurate – to voice this ‘common sentiment.’  It is one that cuts to the heart of a crucial, under-examined aspect of America’s problem with race: the deeply-held conviction, on the part of many whites, that they have been marginalized, treated ‘unfairly,’ and cannot speak honestly about it.  That they, despite all appearances to the contrary, represent the new racial underclass.

Obama himself, in his landmark address on race, noted that many whites do not feel significantly advantaged because of the color of their skin.  In the single greatest misstep of that speech, he put this sentiment  – the resentment, fueled by a lack of opportunity, felt by the critical Democratic voting block of working-class whites – on a par with the ravaging effects of institutional racism on people of color.

Implicit in the white resentment Obama identified, of course, is whites’ belief that they should be significantly advantaged because of their race.  The entitlement they feel no longer squares with reality, and thus they feel cheated in a way they dare not articulate.

So, meanwhile, do their children.  One of the most fascinating trends of the last thirty years is the way cultural capital and hard capital have diverged.  American coolness is coded, more than ever, as American blackness, and young whites all over the country – many of them with little or no personal access to black people but with extensive cable TV packages – assume, based on the signifiers flashing on their screens, that blackness equals flashy, sexy wealth.

They feel locked out of the possibility of attaining that (imaginary) lifestyle, because of their skin color.  This strikes them as oppressive, and fuels a silent resentment.  They have no language with which to discuss it, and no interest in looking at the reams of evidence that would prove to them just how wrong they are – the inheritance of wealth, for instance, or the rates of home-ownership, traditional markers of prosperity that reveal just how privileged whites remain relative to blacks.

The supposed unfairness of affirmative action may be their parents’ signature racial issue; the difficulty of crafting a strong cultural identity as a young white person in this country is theirs.

Both are important to examine, but we can only do so against a backdrop of understanding the far more pernicious and persistent reality of institutional racism  – a cancer metastasizing through the educational system, the justice and penal systems, law enforcement, and every other aspect of American life.  It is this reality that Ferraro and her nameless common-sentiment-expressers fail to see – the essence of white privilege lies in not even realizing you have it – or to address honestly.

Instead, Ferraro rails against a racial gag order even as she proves unaffected by it, citing a silent-majority of whites able to muster outrage at their own ‘unfair treatment’ without acknowledging anyone else’s.  She denies their ‘racism, but acknowledges and justifies their ‘racial resentment.’   Which is different how, exactly?

Adam Mansbach is the author of the novels The End of the Jews (Spiegel & Grau, 2008) and Angry Black White Boy (Crown, 2005).