Wherein you, the readers, talk amongst yourselves.

Do African Americans have a special responsibility to help struggling blacks around the diaspora?

Call it exploitation, post-colonialism, or poor marketing, but the image seen here is actually part of a high-end fashion spread. The editorial layout, which features a toothless gent identified only as "man" who holds a $200 Burberry umbrella, is part of Vogue India's attempt to capitalize on the nation's growing middle class.

The mag's August issue featured not models, but "average" citizens, all unnamed, holding designer bags and couture items.

CONTINUED »

• The potency of the marijuana seized by federal law enforcement agencies in 2007 was more potent than it has been in 30 years. Do with that information what you will.

• Reports show that black children are at high risk for environmental asthma triggers.

• Children are being born in the U.S. with birth weights that are lower than they have been in the past 40 years. Related: More and more children are being born into poverty. Related: A mother's obesity puts newborns at risk.

• China leaves the U.S. in its carbon dioxide dust.

• Tourists are spending lots of dough to travel across the world and snap pictures of destitute people of color up close. [NYT]

• Juelz Santana is in a bit of a legal mess. [NYDN]

• The NAACP has fast-tracked its federal suit against subprime mortgage lenders. [ET]

• Chinese Americans, African immigrants, and Vietnamese Americans are most likely than others to rate their health as poor. [AP]

• This is Webbie. When did rap names get so weak? [C+D]

• Is "white Oprah" well on her way to being just that? [DListed]

• "…we’re seeing an increase in areas where you saw low black voter turnout earlier and this is actually, I believe, would be a plus for the Democratic party in the future. One of the things we see about voting is that it’s habitual so just like brushing your teeth, going to church, once you get into a habit you keep doing it over and over again and so if you can kind of start this routine, people will turn out to vote.." [News8]

• Morris Day and The Time are playing the Essence fest! Hey, somebody's gotta work while Prince's hip recovers. [Fox]

• "…11 of the 15 states with the highest poverty levels are in the South." [FS]

• The St Mary's County Sherrif's Office in Maryland has signed a pact with the local chaptr of the NAACP chapter saying that they agree that they employ too few minority officers. Headway! [WP]

In Haiti, where 80 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day, the poorest have resorted to eating cookies made out of mud, salt, and vegetable shortening because a daily bowl of rice is too expensive. A 16-year-old nursing mother interviewed by the Associated Press says that she eats the mud cookies several times a day, even though they make her stomach hurt. Her only other option is to go without food.

A reporter sampling a cookie found that it had a smooth consistency and sucked all the moisture out of the mouth as soon as it touched the tongue. For hours, an unpleasant taste of dirt lingered. Assessments of the health effects are mixed. Dirt can contain deadly parasites or toxins, but can also strengthen the immunity of fetuses in the womb to certain diseases, said Gerald N. Callahan, an immunology professor at Colorado State University who has studied geophagy, the scientific name for dirt-eating.

Haitian doctors say depending on the cookies for sustenance risks malnutrition.

"Trust me, if I see someone eating those cookies, I will discourage it," said Dr. Gabriel Thimothee, executive director of Haiti's health ministry.

Marie Noel, 40, sells the cookies in a market to provide for her seven children. Her family also eats them.

"I'm hoping one day I'll have enough food to eat, so I can stop eating these," she said. "I know it's not good for me."

The cookies sell for 5 cents a piece, while two cups of rice sell for 60 cents, up 50 percent from a year ago. Due to the world-wide price hikes and the damage to crops as a result of the 2007 hurricane season, the U.N. has declared a state of emergency in Haiti and other Caribbean countries.

• This is for the next time you're in Paris, if you should be so lucky… [USAT]

• "We don't need no stupid global UN Racism conference" — The U.S. [UNW]

• Did Will Smith get the Farrakhan treatment for daring to (innocuously) speak about Hitler? [HP]

• Lupe Fiasco's track about violence in video games is annoying the people at Wired. [Wired]

• Twenty-three percent of inner city black children are infected with roundworm. Very sad and very gross. [FOX]

• Beyonce and Jay-Z will have an onstage performance at the pre-New Year opening of the 40/40 club in Las Vegas. Stans, start saving up now. [CM]

• Blacks are more likely to leave the hospital against doctor's orders. [Reuters]

• Fifty-four percent of the nation's low-income children are in Southern public schools. [FS]

• Blacks and our skin-color issues. [DFP]

• Are there now more spots for young black executives in the corner office? [NYT]

• Sean Combs just got his version of 50's Vitamin water deal. [IHT]

• An Iowa high school principal pulled copies of a student newspaper that featured a student poll showing that 13 percent of the school was racist. How could the principal deprive the black kids of that valuable information? [E&P]

• Poor blacks in DC are getting more destitute as the rich get a lot rich. And the world keeps spinning on its axis. [Reuters]

• James Watson canceled a planned appearance next month in Louisville, KY, and I'm mad they hadn't already revoked their invitation. [AP]

How depressing are the Census reports? All I have to say is, poor black people. No, really. Poor black people.

According to a report released Tuesday by the U. S. Census Bureau, the median household incomes for Black families remained last year at $32,000, the same as it was in 2005. That’s $5,800 less than Hispanic families, which remained at $37,800 and $20,400 less than White families, which remained at $52,400.

Based on the shockingly low poverty line I told you about yesterday, the poverty rates by race are 8.2 percent for whites, 20.6 percent for Latinos, and 24.3 percent for blacks. If only a higher percentage meant better.

An interesting bit of information to note is that Latinos' rate when down by 1.2 percentage points from 2005, which indicates they are actively improving their economic status and also that the same won't happen for our poor unless we do it ourselves.

[BTO]

The 2007 U.S. Poverty Guidelines — you know, the federally accepted "poverty line" used for statistics and eligibility for federal programs — are out. And guess what? For a family of 8, the poverty line starts at $34, 570 a year. I know from experience that this amount is barely enough to feed, house, and clothe a family of one and a small, adorable cockapoo named Charli. Not in New York City, anyway. According the to federal government, the poverty guideline for a single person is $10,210.

With this in mind, consider the fact that 36.5 million people — roughly the state of California's population — lived in poverty last year. They were weeded out using these guidelines. Using my personal opinion of what poverty is, that number is probably at least 2 times that. At this rate, I'm bordering on rich.

[AFB, HHS]

• Scientists have come up with a breast cancer vaccine that actually works? Well, kind of. But not really.

• Poor housing conditions, a thing most people living in them have little control over, are related to diabetes in African Americans.

• Shock! Black adolescents have some psychosocial issues, too.

• And it's about that time again. Welcome to earth, Hurricane Dean.

• There is such a thing as internet addiction, but it is in my best interest not to tell you too much about it. Carry on with your daily perusal of Stereohyped.

Some people hear "projects" and they think wonderful, safe communities filled with caring, loving parents and thriving children. By "some people," I mean a woman named Beauty Turner, who says that the Chicago projects she lived in during the '80s weren't crime-filled and violent, and she wants to save the few the city has left. Her strategy? Charging $20 per person for a "Ghetto Bus Tour."

She recalls when parents like her kept an eye on the neighbor’s kids, a time when the projects shined every bit as much as the buildings now going up in their place and lawns were kept as neat as putting greens.

She downplays the years of violence, saying that all those news reports distorted what day-to-day life was like.

“All the horror stories that you heard about in the newspapers, it was not like that at all,” she said.

But the stories loom over the tour. They are impossible to forget. By the time the city started pulling down or rehabilitating the projects in the late 1990s, each one had its own headlines that spoke to the failure of public housing in Chicago.

I get the core argument — it's happening in big cities everywhere. If you tear down the public housing, poor people have no where to go. But glorifying the most notorious projects in the country on a tour you've dubbed the "Ghetto Bus Tour" is an interesting and probably wholly ineffective way of going about presenting this argument. And $20 a person? I hope at least some of those profits are going to the poor people losing their homes.

[MSNBC]