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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More and more Muslims are turning to home schooling to educate their children, according to a piece in today's Times. In one school district in California, 40 percent of school-aged girls of Pakistani and Southeast Asian descent are taught at home. This exodus is partly due to disgust with American institutions — "Little girls are walking around dressing like hoochies, cursing and swearing and showing disrespect toward their elders" — and partly to fear of harassment — "We don’t want anyone to point a finger at us … to say that we are bad."

Unfortunately, neither of those worries is unfounded; but is pulling their children out of school the most effective way for Muslim parents to alleviate those issues? We say no. Segregation, self-imposed or not, is terrible for diverse communities, especially when the culture being estranged is already considered by many to be insular and frightening. Besides, oftentimes struggle begets progress:

Robina Asghar, a Muslim who does social work in Stockton, Calif., says the fact that her son was repeatedly branded a “terrorist” in school hallways sharpened his interest in civil rights and inspired a dream to become a lawyer. He now attends a Catholic high school.

If you're voting for Barack Obama, The New York Times makes a good argument for segregation today. Stay with me here. In an attempt to solve the conundrum of why Obama wins primaries in urban areas but not urban states and why Hillary Clinton wins rural areas but not rural states, writer Matt Bai posits that ethnically mixed areas have citizens who, as Bai puts it, "[are] less sanguine about racial harmony rather than more so." To wit:

…in the overwhelmingly white states of Wisconsin and Vermont, for instance, [Obama] carried 54 and 60 percent of the white voters respectively, according to exit polls, while in New Jersey he won 31 percent and in Tennessee he won 26 percent. … Obama does best in areas that have either a large concentration of African-American voters or hardly any at all, but he struggles in places where the population is decidedly mixed.

The explanation, of course, is that diverse populations breed people who are wary of everyone, but in an unequal way: don't trust your neighbors, but especially don't trust them if they're not your race. Only in America could we ever owe our first black President to segregation.

Tony Zirkle, the lunatic U.S. Congress hopeful from Indiana, has some very interesting ideas about segregation. Namely, that it's a good thing we should consider bringing back. Why? Well, lot of black people in his state are in jail or having babies out of wedlock, so he figures it might work to just completely separate the entire race. Sort of like Native Americans on reservations. In his capacity as congressman (if he wins that Republican nomination, which is totally a sure thing after this debacle), he'll commission a congressional study on whether or not it's feasible. It could be too costy, he worries.

On the other hand, he said, maybe it could also save the costs of the crime rate — and reduce claims of racial profiling. Granted, he said, it could take a century for the move to really fall in place.

So how would you divvy up Hispanics?

You can pretty much lump them in with whites, he says.

What about black Latinos whose black roots go back several generations in Latin America? And what about the ever-growing number of mixed races?

“You’d have to let people declare what culture they want to be living in,” Zirkle said.

This is a man truly before his time. Wait, I meant after his time. Way, way after his time. [SBT]

Thanks, KA

Many black retired police officers in Georgia are getting paid hundreds of dollars less in monthly pension payments than their white counterparts. Until 1976, black police officers were not allowed to join a state-supported supplemental police retirement fund, so black officers who retired before then are receiving far less than they should. Even though the Georgia State Constitution forbids the state from extending new benefits to employees after they've retired, the retirees have been fighting for an equal pension for eight years.

If lawmakers don't take action in the final weeks of the legislative session, the battle will move to the courthouse this spring, said state Rep. Tyrone Brooks, an Atlanta Democrat and civil rights activist leading the officers' campaign.

"I was hoping we wouldn't have to go this route, but litigation appears to be our only option," Brooks said.

Ronald Hampton, executive director of the National Black Police Association, said he knows of no other state with a similar pension situation. "Only Georgia is shameless enough to still have this out there," Hampton said.

Georgia's House passed an amendment resolution twice, but both times it has gone no where in the Senate. Considering the inequalities the men faced when they were on the job in a segregated, racist atmosphere, they deserve nothing less than equality now. [CNN]

Forty years ago, a commission formed by Lyndon Johnson set out to examine racial inequalities in income, education and employment. The Kerner Commission's 1968 report was the first federal report that identified racism as a problem. The commission set goals for eliminating the inequalities detailed in the report, but the Eisenhower Foundation, which was organized back then to further the commission's work, says in a new report that America gets a D in reaching those 40-year-old goals.

The report finds:

•The poverty gap between blacks and whites has narrowed since 1968 as the percentage of blacks in poverty dropped from 35% to 24%. Still, blacks are three times as likely as whites — and Hispanics twice as likely — to live in extreme poverty.

•School integration has declined in the past two decades. Today, 27% of black students attend mostly white schools, up from 23% in 1968 but down from 37% during the 1980s.*

Well, it clearly is not 1968, anymore. But surely a lot of people back then thought that changes wouldn't take quite so long to happen. Or even worse, that the changes people fought for would begin to reverse. [USAT]

*If this continues to decline, we can thank the Supreme Court.

BLACK SCHOOL IN TORONTO A GO Supporters of a proposed, black-focused public school in Toronto are thrilled that the school board voted this week 11-9 to open the alternative school. Proponents see the school as one solution to the 40 percent dropout rate among black students in the Canadian city. The school was also fiercely opposed by residents who don't like the idea of mandating the segregation of students, calling it a step back. [TS]

Does America no longer have use for the precedent set in Brown vs. Board of Education? Upcoming Supreme Court decisions might, more or less, decide this for us. The question facing the Supreme Court is whether the methods employed by some school districts (Louisville's and Seattle's in particular) to make the racial balance in their public schools reflect the area's demographics discriminate against white students. In last week's issue of the Economist, an article broke down the crisis facing race in public schools, which, in some areas, would be completely segregated if it weren't for local government intervention.

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