Some very negative comments on some very pro-Obama blogs this weekend had me thinking of the possibly fallout among black Americans over Barack Obama’s defection from Trinity Church. What’s your reaction?

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHITE COACHES AND BLACK COACHES? A new study found that black NBA coaches whose teams have losing records are fired more quickly than white coaches whose teams have losing records. Interestingly, the study also found that racism was not a factor in the firing of coaches. [ER]

GOOD NEWS A report from the National Science Foundation shows that black and Hispanic students are closing the achievement gap with white students in the fields of math and science. White students still outperform black and Hispanic students in testing, but minority children are improving at a faster rate. From 2004 to 2006, the proficiency level for black and Hispanic kids improved by about 18 points. [EUR]

RACE AND MATERNAL RESPECT This is why we watch My Super Sweet 16 with our mouths hanging open in shock: “Young African-American and Latina girls treat their mothers with greater deference than do whites but their mothers take it harder when tempers flare, according to a new University of Florida study. ‘Within African-American and Latino families, children follow a cultural tradition that places a high value on respecting, obeying and learning from elders, and in our study they did indeed show more respect for parental authority,’ said Julia Graber, a UF psychology professor.”

We all know that there are more liquor stores and liquor ads in black neighborhoods with high crime, so a study recently conducted by University of Minnesota researchers that found this to be true wasn’t a shock. This tidbit shouldn’t have been a shock either, even though it was — the average price of a 40 ounce bottle of malt liquor was $1.87, which is less than a gallon of milk.

Malt liquor is a concern in inner cities because of its cheap price, high alcohol content, association with heavier drinking, and its link to aggressive behavior that can result in public safety issues, said Rhonda Jones-Webb, Ph.D., associate professor in the School of Public Health and principal investigator of the study. The cheap price of malt liquor also makes it especially available to inner-city youth, she added.

The findings were published in a recent issue of the Journal of Substance Use and Misuse.

“We wanted to know the extent to which the alcohol environment in African American neighborhoods — high concentration of alcohol outlets and high availability and promotion of malt liquor – contributes to high homicide rates in those communities,” Jones-Webb said.

Drugs have more to do with murders in these communities than malt liquor ever will, but it stands to reason that all of these negative factors contribute to the degradation of the neighborhood. And malt liquor is so nasty. That’s probably beside the point.

• Although more unmarried black and Hispanic women have children out of marriage, more minorities think children are important for a healthy marriage than whites. [Yahoo]

• Kelly Rowland’s proud of her record sales, which means she’s not comparing herself to Beyonce. That’s a good thing. [MSNBC]

• More on racism in the Dominican Republic. Is a civil rights movement for Latino blacks on it’s way? [NYP]

• The N-Word writer and Washington Post columnist Jabari Asim has a new gig editing NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis. [E&P]

• In this presidential election, we’re going to be on the voter equivalent of the all candidates’ A-Lists. If they’re smart. [PMV]

In a study that tells every person in America who has health care (or is struggling to get it) something they’ve been knowing, researchers found that we have the poorest and priciest health care compared to five other rich countries. Surprisingly, Canada, a country that everyone holds on a health care pedestal, was the second worst. When we are up against five countries — Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Britain — that offer universal health care, there’s no way we could even come close to having the best system.

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Why? Because it’s not a “black peoples’” war. Using that logic, everyone should hate the war, because it isn’t really for anyone but a small handful of rich Republicans. But according to the Boston Globe, more of us oppose it than anyone else.

As much as everyone hates (or should hate, in my humble opinion) what we’re doing in Iraq, black soldiers seem to hate it even more. They’re showing their displeasure by either not reenlisting or not joining the military at all. African American presence in the military has dropped 9 percentage points — to 13.9 percent — since 2000.

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