Race And Class

A carjacking goes very wrong in "96 Minutes" and the lives of four young people are all set wildly off-course. The feature debut of writer-director Aimee Lagos, the film feels overstuffed and overcooked, as if the filmmaker were trying to get too much out all in one go. Two female college students (Brittany Snow, Christian Serratos) are overtaken by two teenage boys from the rougher side of town. One (Evan Ross) has been struggling to be better than his surroundings, while the other (J. Michael Trautmann)

A carjacking goes very wrong in "96 Minutes" and the lives of four young people are all set wildly off-course. The feature debut of writer-director Aimee Lagos, the film feels overstuffed and overcooked, as if the filmmaker were trying to get too much out all in one go. Two female college students (Brittany Snow, Christian Serratos) are overtaken by two teenage boys from the rougher side of town. One (Evan Ross) has been struggling to be better than his surroundings, while the other (J. Michael Trautmann)

Lorenza Munoz's article concerning interracial dating featured in the movie "Save the Last Dance" lacks courage ("The Delicate Dance of an Interracial Love Story," Jan. 12). Munoz says that "because of the potential for controversy, race and class are dicey issues for studios." This is true only when the man is black and the woman is white. If the guy is white and the women are either black, Hispanic or Asian, movie studios don't have any problem showing interracial relationships. The attitude of studio executives is that white men are entitled to date women of all colors, but black, Hispanic and Asian men are not entitled to date white women.

Let us now, in our hearts or with our bodies, do a funky little dance, a cocky little walk, in praise and memory of Sherman Hemsley, who played George Jefferson for a dozen years in the 1970s and 1980s -- and in scattered cameos thereafter -- and died Tuesday at age 74. As a recurring character on "All in the Family," Jefferson served as a kind of counterweight, if not exactly a counterpart, to Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker: an irascible, abrasive,...

Phylicia Rashad, 63, who became famous playing attorney Clair Huxtable in "The Cosby Show," is director of the Ebony Repertory Theatre production of the classic "A Raisin in the Sun," now at the Kirk Douglas Theatre through Feb. 19. She also rejoins Tyler Perry as his character's mother in his new film "Good Deeds," which opens Feb. 24. After appearing as Lena Younger in "A Raisin in the Sun," which won you a Tony, how did you put your stamp...

Re "The Bias of 'Color Blind' Juvenile Justice," Opinion, June 27: Vincent Schiraldi cited studies that found that black youths were "more likely [than their white peers] to be detained, locked up on sentencing or sent to adult prisons, even with other factors equal." Schiraldi rightly notes that "white middle-class youths" are at an advantage in numerous, important ways when they get into legal trouble. But it is not clear whether this is because they are white, because they are middle class or some combination of the two. Race and class are clearly interrelated, but it cannot be assumed that one is a proxy for the other.

Let us now, in our hearts or with our bodies, do a funky little dance, a cocky little walk, in praise and memory of Sherman Hemsley, who played George Jefferson for a dozen years in the 1970s and 1980s -- and in scattered cameos thereafter -- and died Tuesday at age 74. As a recurring character on "All in the Family," Jefferson served as a kind of counterweight, if not exactly a counterpart, to Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker: an irascible, abrasive,...

One of the dirty little secrets of the American workplace--and a mostly overlooked wrinkle in the firing of basketball player Latrell Sprewell--is the so-called "screamer," a boss who feels at liberty to berate and belittle his employees even if he feels constrained by law or political correctness from making sexual advances or using racial epithets.

Lydia R. Diamond, whose plays often work the intersection of race and class, remembers once posing a hypothetical scenario she knew would prompt heated debate. The 42-year-old African American playwright and teacher contended that if the Obamas had a son and that son became the fiancé of somebody's white daughter, the young woman's family would not be happy, despite the breeding and connections. "My white friends would say, 'No, no, no, you're wrong! Class would trump race,'" she recalls.

Some will be running the Los Angeles Marathon on Sunday because it is there, because it is supposed to be one of those only in L.A. happenings, because somebody told them they had to be kidding at their age, or because they could use a new Mercedes and $15,000 cash. And somewhere in this bobbing sea of 19,000 running shorts will be Roy Wiseman, striding forward for a far more personal cause: Martin Campos and his brother, Salvador.

Phylicia Rashad, 63, who became famous playing attorney Clair Huxtable in "The Cosby Show," is director of the Ebony Repertory Theatre production of the classic "A Raisin in the Sun," now at the Kirk Douglas Theatre through Feb. 19. She also rejoins Tyler Perry as his character's mother in his new film "Good Deeds," which opens Feb. 24. After appearing as Lena Younger in "A Raisin in the Sun," which won you a Tony, how did you put your stamp...

Lydia R. Diamond, whose plays often work the intersection of race and class, remembers once posing a hypothetical scenario she knew would prompt heated debate. The 42-year-old African American playwright and teacher contended that if the Obamas had a son and that son became the fiancé of somebody's white daughter, the young woman's family would not be happy, despite the breeding and connections. "My white friends would say, 'No, no, no, you're wrong! Class would trump race,'" she recalls.

Re "AWOL in the real drug war," Opinion, March 24 Arianna Huffington is on the money and exposes what this country is all about. Whites would not put up with sending their children to prison on outrageous drug charges. We are long overdue in having a real conversation on race and class as it applies to our criminal justice system. Americans are basically misinformed or lack courage. Whatever the case, we look like a dog chasing its tail. Let us be smart and bring these drugs inside of the law. This will make life better for all of us. CLIFFORD WALLACE THORNTON JR. Hartford, Conn.

It was perhaps foreseeable that a plan to lock some of Britain's most annoying personalities under the same roof would turn ugly. The defrocked beauty queen, the sniffy Bollywood movie star, the dimwit reality show veteran famous for wondering whether Cambridge was in London -- could it have turned into anything but a catfight? Hardly anybody, though, thought it would turn into an international incident.

With several New Orleans schools scheduled to reopen today, scores of parents, children, educators and community activists gathered Wednesday to protest the continued closure of another one: Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School for Science & Technology in the Lower 9th Ward, which has remained unfit for occupation since Hurricane Katrina.

A grand jury indicted two members of the Duke University lacrosse team Monday for the alleged rape of an exotic dancer, practically ensuring months of continued controversy in a school and city that have been consumed by issues of race, sex and privilege since details of the case emerged in March. The indictments were issued under seal and the names of the suspects were not known.

Michael Balaoing somehow misplaced the memory, the one that long rested beneath the clutter of alphabets, pledges of allegiance, patriotic songs, theorems, significant dates and locales committed by heart for exams. The memory that has been dimmed by the day-to-day debris of important study--inside the classroom and out.

It's technically called an egg "donation. " But if you're a young Asian woman, donating your eggs to an infertile couple can fetch enough cash to buy a used car or perhaps a semester at college. The same market forces that drive the price of cotton, copper and other commodities - supply and demand - have allowed Asian women to command about $10,000 to $20,000 for their eggs, also known as gametes or ova. Women of other ethnic groups typically get about $6,000 when they can sell their eggs, but they often can't for lack of demand, according to donation agencies and fertility clinics.

The campus of Duke University has been awash in protests and soul-searching over allegations from a police investigation involving the school lacrosse team: that a black exotic dancer performed at a party attended by members of the team, most of whom are white; that the party grew rowdy and racial slurs were uttered; and that she was cornered, choked and gang-raped.

A Harvard University graduate student was convicted Thursday of fatally stabbing a teenage kitchen worker during a late-night street fight in front of a pizza parlor. Alexander Pring-Wilson, 26, displayed no emotion as the jury, after five days of deliberations, found him guilty of voluntary manslaughter; prosecutors had sought a conviction of first-degree murder.