When Disney announced last year that an feature-length animated with a black heroine was in the works, I was beyond thrilled. Growing up, I was a major Disney buff — like most children of the 80s, I presume — and although I still have a great amount of affection for the classics, as I grew older my disappointment in the company’s apparent lack of interest in including black characters in its animated films began to overshadow that childhood love. But now they’re making a black, animated Disney film! My future daughters will have their own animated heroine to look up to! Unfortunately, based on information from people in the know, I might have gotten excited too soon. Disney, a company with a racially-murky past that won’t stay in the vault no matter how hard execs try to keep it hidden, appears to be having quite a few problems coming up with a storyline that isn’t offensive. Fancy that.

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Wherein you, the readers, talk amongst yourselves.

It’s only human to harbor a little (or a lot) of intolerance here and there, whether you choose to display it or not. Do you ever find yourself having negative feelings about someone based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity or religion? Why? Do you try to have a more open mind when you recognize your own prejudices or do you believe it’s not a problem?

Oh, The South, what are we gonna do with you?

That scuffle with Shreveport, Louisiana locals and police officers that resulted in the arrests of Josh Brolin, Jeffrey Wright and several others associated with the film W? Turns out it began after a good ol’ Looziana boy hurled a racial slur at Wright.

Sixty-seven residents in the majority black neighborhood of Coal Run in Ohio have just been awarded a total of $11 million by a federal jury, which found that a the local government had denied them public water service because the were black. Each plaintiff was awarded between $15,000 and $300,000 to cover monetary loss and pain and suffering that occurred between 1956 and 2003, when the town finally received public water. Prior to 2003, residents were forced to dig wells, collect rain water or haul water for cisterns in order to cook, clean and bathe.

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The American Medical Association, in a rare move by a national organization, will issue a formal apology today for its past treatment of black doctors. Ronald M. Davis, a past president of the association, wrote in the July 16th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, “The medical profession, which is based on a boundless respect for human life, had an obligation to lead society away from disrespect of so many lives. The AMA failed to do so and has apologized for that failure.” The apology comes after a panel was put together to examine the historical failures of the AMA when it came to segregation and racism.

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Memín Pinguín is a comic book character so beloved by Mexicans that the country gave him his own stamp back in 2005. He’s a hapless, bumbling-but-lovable black boy who happens to look almost exactly like a monkey. Americans find him a lot less adorable than Mexicans do. This is why in 2005, Jesse Jackson and even President Bush frowned upon the stamp, while Vincente Fox denied that Memín books are racist and said he didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

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Former North Carolina senator Jesse Helms once said that he “did not come to Washington to win a popularity contest.” That’s a good thing, because Helms, who died Friday at the age of 86, was never in the running for Most Popular Senator. Even in his obituaries, reporters are having a hard time finding nice things to say about a guy who was an unabashed bigot and a symbol of the sort of southern racism that has been a major pock on the history of the United States. Frequently when someone of Helms’ renown dies, we say, “it’s the end of an era.” We’re talking about a man who once said that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was “the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress.” If his death really does mark the end of an era, then we should all thank our lucky stars.

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As of right now, hip hop website SOHH.com is down. This is all well and good, because you probably didn’t want to see what was on it earlier. The site was attacked by a group of very anti-SOHH, anti-black, anti-Jew hackers, who infiltrated the forums, splashed racist and anti-semitic pictures on the homepage, and changed all headlines to things like, “Jews Did 9/11″ and “Enjoy This White Wimmenz, N*gger.” The group, which gets no publicity here, tried to blame the disturbance on comedy site ebaumsworld.com. [Streets Knowledge (NSFW]

You see Barack Obama’s touch everywhere — in the new generation of voters he’s moved to register to vote and support his candidacy, in the smiling faces of elderly blacks, in the starry-eyed gazes of political pundits, and in the message boards on white supremacist sites. Wait, what?

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A group of black ministers plans to protest at the Democratic and Republican national headquarters today to try to convince politicians to refuse donations from Planned Parenthood. Republican candidates get donations from Planned Parenthood? Anyway, the group is protesting because they say Planned Parenthood took donations from racist donors who wanted their money to go toward black abortions. For their part, Planned Parenthood says that they were victims of “phishing” and that their organization does not tolerate racism of any kind. It’s not mentioned in the article, but Alveda King, the niece of MLK and leader of the group, is an extremely vocal pro-lifer. So the protest of Planned Parenthood is clearly not just about racist practices. [USN]