I became aware of the Impostor Syndrome eight or nine years ago, when I was working for a failing start-up. Watching our staff whittle to half its size every few weeks was starting to take a toll on the remaining employees. I was grateful to still be working, but I wondered whether I should start looking into another job -- something more secure.

The stories that a nation tells about its history provide a foundation for building community, creating institutions and transmitting values. For a pluralistic democracy such as the United States, the work that historians call "constructing a usable past" is vital to the task of building a future.

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.

How do we know the truth of what is happening in Haiti - especially those of us who are in the global north and west, our perceptions shaped by a tragic history, largely unknown, in which our governments have often been complicit? As the immediate rescue effort becomes a sustained task of recovery how do we know when ideology and naked self-interest warp news accounts and recovery efforts? 

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

It's census time in the United States.The US Constitution requires a national head-count every 10 years, and the exercise is typically fraught with arcane debates over how people should be allowed to classify themselves, what questions should be asked, and who gets to decide what should be counted. For those of us who study the question of what it means to be American, the census is a historical marker of the judgments made by those with the power to name.This year, for example, we have the option of identifying ourselves as "Negro" when we fill out our forms - an option that the Census Bureau says it is providing because 56,175 people who filled out the 2000 Census so named themselves.

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.

This is the week in which we honor the birth of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King. It is a holiday that was, in the words of the song, "a long time coming." This year, we are calling it "A Day of Service," with the slogan "Make it a Day On, not a Day Off." It is a noble and appropriate idea. And who could not be thankful that members of the first family and the cabinet cooked food at homeless shelters and soup kitchens, cleaned trash up in a beautification project, and directly delivered food to the hungry? It's a good thing to do to really honor Martin Luther King.

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.

I had no real interest in watching MTV's Jersey Shore until three different people on three different occasions told me to watch. They all loved it, saying that it was essentially a delicious trainwreck that I had to see for myself.