The now infamous Cambridge, Mass., incident that started when Sgt. James Crowley investigated a report of a possible break-in at the home of Henry Louis Gates, the well-known African-American Harvard professor, has dominated this past week's news...

From time to time, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Clarence Thomas have naturally talked about growing up African-American under far less tolerant conditions than those we take for granted today...

America's war over affirmative action has gone on longer than any of the country's military conflicts, and over the decades each side of this debate has spawned a vast literature of argument...

It seems it was more important in this speech for Obama to establish his and Michelle's "street cred" as children of deprivation, bogus though that is...