Leave it to Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit branch of the NAACP, to organize a panel discussion on the provocative topic: “Is Gay the New Black?” The lively and sometimes passionate discussion was held as part of Freedom Weekend activities in Detroit and mirrored a long-running debate around the country among African-Americans and between Blacks and the lesbian and gay community.

The question is premised on whether the LBGT community (lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender) is discriminated against in the same manner that African-Americans were prior to passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Acts and, to a lesser extent, today. City Council President Charles Pugh, who is openly gay, was the only panelist who took a different tact, thinking the question was about the color black as a fashion statement.

(NNPA)—Like everyone else who read professor Skip Gates’ piece in the New York Times asserting that Africans were just as responsible for slavery as Europeans, I was aghast because he is one of the most acclaimed scholars in the country and his position lends credibility to those who oppose an historical corrective for the oppression of African peoples.

Admittedly, my concern also arises from the publication of my most recent book on reparations, “The Price of Racial Reconciliation,” in which I take a strong position favoring reparations as a long-time member of this movement. Although Gates’ argument is cast in scholarly terms, it should be said that he is not a recognized scholar of African history, a fact that has caused him to design a simple equation of the culpability of Africans with Europeans in the slave trade. This cannot be so, even if it is his point that Africans were surely involved in the slave trade.

I love the blog “Stuff White People Like.” The site promotes itself as a “tongue-in-cheek comprehensive list of everything left-wing, upper-middle-class Caucasians enjoy.” The list is pretty accurate based on what I know of my White liberal friends, they love listening to Black music that Black people don’t listen to anymore (No. 116), publicly screaming about how they hate their parents (No. 17) and of course Facework (No. 106). Recently, Christian Lander, the blog’s creator, was being interviewed on “Lopez Tonight” and joked about how in his mind Obama is a “White liberal” president. The reason? Obama has the one accessory that all White liberals want—cute Black children. I couldn’t help but think of this last week when Sandra Bullock was on the cover of People Magazine with her newly adopted Black baby boy, Louis. It’s nice to see another White celebrity get exactly what they like, and not have to answer any tough questions about it.

(NNPA)—Arizona Senate Bill 1070 gives law enforcement officers the right to stop, question, arrest and detain any person they suspect is in the United States illegally. What gives rise to such suspicion? Give the climate and the content in which the law has been passed, it might well be called the “detain suspected Mexicans” legislation.

Few of us should get comfortable, though, thinking the legislation targets Mexican Americans and not others. Giving law enforcement the right to stop based on suspicion is a license to harass folks who are “other,” and that may include African-Americans and other brown people. It isn’t likely that White folks are likely to be stopped, though perhaps they ought to be.