Many of us live in diverse communities where we interact with a culturally diverse group of people, but because I work in the downtown core in a large, metropolitan city, I understand that for some their racial tolerance has a short expiry date, ending at 5pm on Friday afternoons. Once they get off the commuter train and reach their homes in the suburbs, that tolerance goes out the window. But in this day and age, I'm of the opinion that anyone who has issues with their children dating or marrying across racial lines should have raised them in a forest or under a rock.

I have to admit, I felt sick to my stomach when I read this quote from Queen Latifah:

In the past week, there were two WTF? moments: First was the brouhaha over the latest cover of Essence magazine that featured NFL star Reggie Bush, who plays for the New Orleans Saints. The picture (apparently from an old GQ shoot a few years ago) is amazing. Not particularly my type, but I think he is still a fine-looking brotha.

By now, everyone has probably heard of the Harry Reid and Rod Blagojevich outbursts about society's punching bag ... black folks. In case you haven't been paying attention (which in some ways, is quite sad): In a new book, Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, Reid is quoted as saying that the  believed Obama could become the country's first black president because he was "light-skinned" and had "no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

For the past few months I have taken to picking up one of Toronto's weekly newspapers, Eye Weekly on a regular basis. It's been around for awhile and recently they have hired a crop of excellent writers. One of the columnist, a young white woman, is especially talented and writes a column on her life in the city.