Racial Relations

A ferociously contested congressional race in the San Gabriel Valley has emerged as a classic test of the power of ethnic politics in the aftermath of Barack Obama's racial breakthrough in the presidential election. The election Tuesday to fill the House seat vacated by U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis also spotlights the clashing political aspirations of two of California's fastest growing ethnic groups, Asians and Latinos.

Murder charges were dropped at the prosecution's request Thursday in the dragging death of a black man in east Texas, and the two white men accused of killing him were released from jail. Shannon Finley and Charles Crostley had been charged with running over a friend, Brandon McClelland, 24, after a late-night beer run in September.

To those who know it only by reputation, the Nickerson Gardens housing project in Watts is a forbidding place, plagued by violence and poverty and ruled by African American gangs. So naturally, Father Peter Banks brought 200 Latino parishioners there in December for a posada, a Christmas ritual that re-creates Joseph and Mary's search for a place for Jesus to be born. Banks, pastor of St.

After Cheryl Green, a black teenager, was gunned down, allegedly by Latino gang members, near her house after school, her mother was approached by several African Americans offering to retaliate violently for her daughter's death. Earlier this week, Charlene Lovett recalled the moment, looking back on how tense relations between blacks and Latinos had become in the section of Harbor Gateway known as "The Strip."

Five members of the "Jena Six" pleaded no contest Friday to misdemeanor simple battery and won't serve jail time, ending a case that thrust a small Louisiana town into the national spotlight and sparked a massive civil rights demonstration. The five were sentenced to seven days of unsupervised probation and fined $500.

One of Michael Jackson's most famous lyrics proclaims, "It don't matter if you're black or white." But when it comes to the late singer's identification with African Americans, that declaration becomes much cloudier.

Hadie Mohd last saw his father as he headed out to the family's vacated home to paint over anti-Arab and white supremacist graffiti scrawled across the walls inside. "He said he would be back before sundown," Mohd said. "And he always kept his word." But when sundown came, Ali Abdelhadi Mohd had not returned. About 9:45 p.m. on June 27, neighbors in this scruffy high-desert town heard an explosion they said sounded like a sonic boom. Flames engulfed the single-story home.

Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was mildly critical Tuesday of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., whose angry response to a Cambridge, Mass., police officer touched off a national debate involving President Obama. Powell, interviewed by CNN's Larry King, cited times when he was a victim of racial profiling -- including as national security advisor. Sometimes, he said, you just have to let it slide. The confrontation between Gates, a noted black scholar, and white police Sgt.

Black Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. on Sunday joked about his arrest by a white police officer; he also described receiving death threats and having a dream about being arrested at the White House. In his first public appearance since sharing a beer at the White House on Thursday with the officer and President Obama, Gates said the national debate over racial profiling sparked by his July 16 arrest shows that issues of class and race still run "profoundly deep" in the United States.

A freshman Kansas congresswoman said Thursday that her remark about fellow Republicans seeking a "great white hope" was not a reference to someone who could challenge President Obama or his political agenda. Rep. Lynn Jenkins said she was instead making a comment about GOP leaders in the House and was trying to reassure Republicans that the party has bright leaders there. She used the phrase during an Aug. 19 forum in Hiawatha, Kan.; someone in the crowd recorded it and gave the video to the Kansas Democratic Party.