This needs to end: "So you didn’t date any black girls?" Not since I've had a curfew have people been so concerned about with whom I spend my time.

I'm not going to rehash my sexual history with the Internet, as it's really not anyone's business, but I will say that most of the women with whom I've had relationships have been white. And here's why:

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On my first day at Stereohyped, I was asked by some readers what qualified me to work here (ie "What's your race?"). I was taken aback by the query and upset by its inherent assumptions. My boss thinks I'm qualified, I wanted to scream at the firing line, do you sign my checks? That said, I'm willing to admit that part of my anger stemmed from this fact: I didn't know that I was qualified. Full disclosure: I'm not even half black. My mother is of German descent and my father is part black and part American Indian, an ethnic pairing appearing in my lineage thanks to a ribald ancestor who had a stint as a Buffalo Soldier. I am an amalgam, an alloy part, and at the time I didn't feel comfortable saying that to people who seemed to be hungry for a, yes, black or white answer. My skin tone and indecision were one taupe mass.

To better pick my way through this existential dilemma, I started jotting down the incidents in my life that have made me feel truly, unshakably African American. Soon, I had composed what I hope you will indulge me enough to read, a very general glimpse into what I believe to be my "blackness," the credentials that explain my employment at a site devoted to black culture.

I hate lessons, but if I learned anything from this particular creative process, it's that though I am not by birth an archetypal African American, I have been presumed to be and treated as such, for better or worse, many, many times over the course of my history. I learned that my black experience can't be spoken of in terms of black and white. It's red like anger, green like envy, an energetic yellow and, far too often, a deep, dark blue.

I hope that no matter what color you are you'll be able to relate to at least some of the following, especially the bad parts. As I've come to know, the worst of times are almost always the most enlightening.

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What is the black experience? Newspaper reporters write lengthy stories, for which they interview people leaving church and waiting to get their hair done at the salon, about it. Politicians drop it in their speeches. In moments of laziness, I surely refer to it on this blog. What experience is universal among all black people? Besides the obvious — existing in our various shades of brown skin — I would argue that black Americans share the experience of living in a society, a world even, that's dominated by people who don't look like us and, even if some of us have never felt it in person or experienced it first-hand, being of a race that has been judged, stereotyped, stepped on, and discriminated against, in varying degrees, since the United States as we know it came into existence. Many of us, but not all of us, share church-going habits and religions. Many of us, but not all of us, share food preferences and family traditions. But, culturally, how much do we all have in common? A lot of us have been discriminated against directly, but many of us haven't. No one has ever spray-painted "Die Nigger" on my garage door, but knowing that it has happened somewhere out there in suburban America to people who look like me for the sole reason that they are black still makes me sad, still unsettles me, still fills me with a dull sort of anger. If we have nothing in common in our present lives, one thing black people share is history.

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It's been over 60 years since Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier of Major League Baseball, and yet the sport is still almost completely void of African Americans. In 1995, the MLB was 19 percent black. Now, that statistic has dropped to just nine percent. Experts theorize that a demand for cheap labor is a major cause of this decline. Professional baseball clubs can hire three or four foreign players for the price of one American. On top of that, many inner city high schools don't even offer baseball programs to their student athletes, so there aren't fresh black stars to replace the aging pros.

The nation's capital hopes to reverse this trend. The Washington Nationals and DC's RBI (Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities) are establishing programs intended to revitalize black youth's interest in the sport. RBI provides baseball training, education and mentoring to roughly 500 kids in some of the most economically depressed neighborhoods in DC. For their part, the Nationals have "adopted" several public schools in the city, and each team member is required to visit at least once a month with the students.

"It's important to have minority players involved in the community," says an executive with the Nationals. "The more players they see, the more it moves the ball forward."

We've got one question before a lot of valuable time and money goes into this effort: Why the hell does anyone care how many black kids are playing baseball? For years now, football and basketball have been dominated by black athletes, and yet still this: "Across a range of economic indicators including measures of employment, poverty, housing, income and wealth, blacks were much worse off than whites. If whites scored 100 percent on such measures, blacks scored just 56.8 percent, a figure unchanged from last year … " Is baseball going to get that percentage to 80? 70?

Sorry if we're less than concerned that a few dozen black teenagers can't become blingy millionaires for swinging a stick, we're a bit engaged with trying to understand why an entire race of people is languishing.

In Central Florida, 36 percent of the black population is obese, compared with 21 percent of whites and 20 percent of Hispanics. It's such a frightening statistic that schools have started sending home notes to parents of overweight children asking them to enroll themselves and their kids into free fitness programs. Contrary to what you'd expect, parent's are not offended. "When I got the notice, I thought this was an answered prayer," said one recipient. "We want to be healthy." Amazing! Who knew all those ignorant rednecks were wrong when they said that "welfare queens" enjoy their lifestyle?

Here it is, the fiery polemic from Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's pastor, the man who baptized both Obama's daughters and who married Barack and his wife, Michelle. According to Slate, Wright's been taking a lot of heat on the Internet since the above sermon ended up on YouTube. Though his speech was long and weighty, the Reverend is being chastised specifically for these comments:

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Surprise! Minorities in the US are more likely than whites to rate their health care as poor. This opinion is most prevalent amongst blacks born in Africa, Vietnamese Americans, Chinese Americans and, though they weren't included in the study, thousands from America's shivering homeless minority.

Researchers at Harvard surveyed more than 4,000 adults and asked them questions like how quickly they were able to get an appointment when sick and whether their doctor explained things in a way the patient could understand.

91 percent of whites rated their care as excellent or good compared to 72 percent of Vietnamese Americans and 73 percent of blacks born in Africa. About three-quarters of whites also reported that their doctor listened carefully to them. That percentage dropped to 58 percent for patients from Central or South America.

According to experts, these study results are pretty much par for the course.

To be fair, many whites think our country's health care is shit, too. But, as you may recall, the inequality of America's health care system has been problematic for years, and it's one of the reasons our fucking unbelievably rich nation came in just behind Costa Rica in the WHO's rankings of the world's health systems.

America's staunchest liberals just got another great reason to snuff the rants of the overzealous, self-important Minutemen patrolling our nation's borders. A new article from the Southern Poverty Law Center suggests that the ever-loudening immigrant debate in the United States has triggered an increase in its hate groups by almost half.

Entitled "The Year in Hate," the article by SPLC staffers David Holthouse and Mark Potok states that the Montgomery, Ala.-based organization's latest annual count of hate groups in America found 888 operating in 2007, up 5 percent from 844 the year before.

"Hate groups continue to successfully exploit the immigration debate to their advantage, even though the immigration issue has largely disappeared from the presidential debate," said Potok …

"The fact is that they've been aided and abetted by mainstream pundits and politicians who give these haters a platform for their propaganda," he added.

Is it bad I just briefly worried about how often I'm mistaken for Cuban (and Puerto Rican and Spanish and … )?

AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES NBC just ordered several episodes of a Lisa Kudrow-hosted reality series called Who Do You Think You Are? that traces the genealogy of celebrities. They say it's based on a wildly popular show in the UK, but it sounds a lot like PBS and Henry Louis Gates' (fascinating, I think) series, African American Lives. On the UK series, as well as AAL, participants are often "brought to tears" when they learn of about their ancestors hardships and triumphs. No matter what, the producers are going to need some somber mood music on reserve if they ever invite any Black American celebs to participate. Slavery's pretty much a universal downer. [HR]

Some eggheads at the Center for Attaching Numbers to Common Sense have come to the conclusion that African American teen mothers are more likely to get pregnant again if they're depressed.

Researchers examined almost 300 black moms between the ages of 12(!!!!!!!!!!!) and 18 living in Baltimore – home of The Wire and many killings – and discovered that teenage mothers with symptoms of depression reported subsequent pregnancies 44 percent more often than other mothers.

The study also found that depressed women are more likely to drop out of school and have unsafe sex, which fills out the equation perfectly:

teenage mom + lots of free time + little to no self-respect = another baby

The dismal "State of Black America" report released yesterday by the National Urban League speaks largely to the fact that blacks, in general, are finding it hard to succeed in today's America. But the report also specifically addresses the plights – and successes – of the black, American woman.

Like their white counterparts, black women tend to earn less than black men – $566 a week compared to $629 – despite the fact that they comprise a larger part of the workforce. And according to Andrea Harris, president of the North Carolina Institute for Minority Economic Development, the subprime loan foreclosure crisis rattling most real estate markets in the United States is disproportionately affecting black women.

Then there's the issue of pop culture:

Julianne Malveaux, the president of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, N.C., contends in the report's opening essay that the image of black women in popular culture has barely improved in the year since the Imus incident.

White men continue to dominate on TV's Sunday morning news shows, she writes, while "the gyrating, undulating image of African-American women in rap music videos and, by extension, on cable television is as prevalent as ever."

There is some good news: Between 1997 and 2006, businesses owned by black women increased by 147 percent, while the overall business growth rate was only 24 percent. There's also been a noticeable increase in black women in the Democratic electorate since the last presidential election.

Now how to make voting and business owning as attractive as having Fat Joe throw sweaty dollar bills at you?

Weathered journalist Saul Friedman recently dipped his quill into his ink pot, steadied his hand and scratched out this argument: "If race is not an issue in this presidential contest (and I believe it is and will be), then how come virtually every mainstream black columnist has been effusively and unabashedly supporting Sen. Barack Obama, and highly critical of and even caustic towards Sen. Hillary Clinton?"

The rest of Friedman's essay, "Mainstream Black Columnists and Barack Obama," reads how a squinting man with his arms extended outward and his palms turned upward looks. In summation: "What gives?"

"I would expect all these writers to rightly denounce making race an issue," Friedman says at one point, before rattling off a lengthy list of prominent black newspaper columnists who have announced their support of Obama. "But I wonder if their near unanimity has made an issue of race. "Liberal white columnists have not been single-minded," he then posits.

Scathing! Or is it? Newsday's Sheryl McCarthy says no: "I see nothing wrong with that…For about 140 years blacks have been voting for…white candidates…And now there is finally a viable black candidate who happens to be a very strong candidate. Why on earth wouldn’t they support him?"

So, because Obama's the first to do it then why not? Sorry, but if that's the best black columnists can do, we've got to go with Friedman on this one.

According to a report released last month, many Americans who consider themselves unprejudiced still subconsciously link blacks with apes. We nearly spit our banana all over our monitor at the news!

"Historical racist images and books dehumanizing African Americans in the 19th and early 20th century relied heavily on the Negro-ape metaphor, which was used to stereotype Blacks as lazy, dim and aggressive," said lead author Phillip Atiba Goff, assistant professor of psychology at Penn State. "Such dehumanization and animal imagery have been used for centuries to justify violence against many oppressed groups.

"The images have disappeared from popular culture and from most people's memory," he added. "However, after completing six studies, we found strong evidence that Black-ape linkages still influence people subconsciously and impact their judgment particularly in the case of African American suspects and defendants."

In one study, researchers "primed" their test subjects by showing them subliminal images on a screen of either black or white male faces. They then showed them pictures of blurred apes. Their findings were that the subjects could identify blurry drawings of apes much faster after being primed with black faces than with white faces.

Another study looked into the language used in hundreds of Philadelphia Inquirer articles from 1979 to 1999 about people convicted of capital crimes. Black defendants were about four times more likely to be described with terms deemed "ape-relevant," like "barbaric," "beast," "brute," "savage" and "wild."

Researchers say that as recently as last decade California state police would refer to cases involving black men as NHIs: No Humans Involved.