I’ll be speaking at this luncheon on women, diversity, and leadership next Thursday. Sounds like an interesting panel! If you’re interested in attending, email me at carmen@newdemographic.com. I have a few comp tickets.

I’m gonna have to try this next time before I get on a plane. From Daniel Pink’s blog:

Pink’s Travel Tips — Tip #1 from DHP on Vimeo.

I just came across this excellent infographic/cartoon that illustrates exactly how limiting the current U.S. immigration system is. It was posted by Citizen Orange as part of a post responding to our recent discussion on Racialicious about those who oppose illegal immigration for different reasons than the usual racism/xenophobia.

Click the graphic to download the PDF:

I’m quoted in the cover story of this week’s New York Press. The article is about the sexualization of Obama.

Sigh… the cover image makes me roll my eyes. They’re trying way! too! hard! to! be! salacious! Which is too bad, because Nicole actually explores a lot of important and interesting themes throughout the piece. I hope people actually read the whole thing, not just the parts about big black swinging dicks.

Anyway, here was my take on it:

“I’ve always been a little perplexed around the media’s obsession with Barack’s looks,” says Carmen Van Kerckhove, co-founder and president of racial consulting firm New Demographic and head of the popular and salacious blog, Racialicious. “He’s good looking for a politician, but he doesn’t have movie-star good looks.” Van Kerckhove calls this overemphasis on the candidate’s looks trite. “People think, ‘I can’t be racist, I think Obama is good looking.’ I’ve always interpreted people tripping over themselves to say how good-looking he is as revealing a level of [embedded] racism.”

…Perceptions of Obama are complicated, however, and a number of the contradictory, racist and celebrity perceptions of the presidential hopeful reflect what Van Kerckhove describes as “a fine line between fetishization and finding something beautiful and unusual.”

MadTV ran a spoof of Obama sleeping with a white woman. Charges are pending over Obama T-shirts bearing the likeness of Curious George holding a large, phallic banana. An email chain circulated recently features a book cover mock-up of Obama’s face with the title Where all the White Women At?

“It goes to show,” Van Kerckhove says, “racism is well and alive in America. People like to pat themselves on the back and say we’ve moved beyond race—we’re really scared to go anywhere near it.”

Just seven days to go until perhaps the most important election ever.

I urge all of you who are Obama supporters: Do not get complacent now.

Sure, several polls suggest that Obama has a double-digit lead over McCain — but that doesn’t mean we should assume that he’s got it in the bag.

As longtime Republican political operative Bill Greener recently wrote on Salon.com, when undecided voters have to choose between a black candidate and a white candidate, they tend to vote white:

If you’re a black candidate running against a white candidate, what you see is what you get. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re an incumbent or a challenger. If you’re not polling above 50 percent, you should be worried. As of this writing, Barack Obama is not polling consistently above 50 percent in a number of electoral-vote-rich swing states, including Ohio and Florida. He should be worried.

And let’s not discount the huge role that voter suppression will likely play. Jay Smooth from the video blog Ill Doctrine put together this “Poem for the Young Voter” to drive that point home:

So what can you do to help at this historic time?

First of all, make sure you protect your own vote by reading this 12-step checklist of what to do before, on, and after Election Day. And share the list with your family and friends by using this form here.

Then, do one or all of these 3 things:

1. Volunteer for the campaign.
2. Call or visit voters in battleground states.
3. Find and join an event in your local area.

What will you be doing in the next 7 days to work towards change?

Leave a comment and let me know.

Glad I’m not the only one who’s noticed this strange tendency on the Food Network. h/t Angry Asian Man

LOL! h/t Angry Asian Man

Please go read it on Racialicious.

I really think that McCain’s race-baiting tactics show what utter contempt and condescension he has towards white voters. If I were a working-class white guy in middle America, I’d be disgusted.

Poignant piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates for Time magazine:

African Americans have had to cope with disappointment since the days of slavery. With that come certain defense mechanisms, ways of guarding ourselves against disappointment. Frankly, I was perfectly fine with the idea of never seeing a black President in my lifetime. When Obama entered the race, any expectations we had were negative. We started to see the light in Iowa, but even as his support became a popular movement, there was always a kind of disbelief in the idea that America would really vote for a black man. We’d like to be wrong, but we think we’re right. There is no sense in the black community of the kind of entitlement to the presidency felt by some Hillary Clinton supporters. Many of them expressed shock at the sort of sexism that greeted her. But very few black people were shocked that Michelle Obama was called a “baby mama” or that GOP Congressmen seem to have a penchant for referring to Obama as “boy” and “uppity.”

That’s why an Obama defeat would be met with resignation more than rage. No one is more tired of talking about racism than black people. The disenchantment with protest politics, the fatigue from refighting old battles over school integration and affirmative action, even the rise of politicians like Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick point to a shift in the disposition of black America. The big issues of the day aren’t so much racial profiling and police brutality as the achievement gap, the incarceration rate and unemployment. The great race conversation has not only decreased in volume; for black people, it’s also become much more introverted. At this moment, black America is in the grips of a kind of barbershop conservatism that is more concerned with its own progress than with the attitudes of whites.

So, yes, an Obama defeat would be greeted with a loud sucking of the teeth and a deepening of self-doubt. A loss would be hugely disappointing, and to put it crudely, it would also be more of the same. But it is also true that the biggest change has already taken place. The Obama campaign has been the anti–O.J. trial, a 24-hour ongoing drama about a black man cast not as a problem but, potentially, as the solution.

Have I mentioned how much I love her? No? Okay then, I love her.