A new report shows that the number of African American professional baseball players continues to decline. According to the University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports (UCFIDES), in 2006, 8.4 percent of MLB athletes were black. Last year, that percentage fell to just 8.2, the lowest it's been in 20 years. "African Americans just aren't playing it at this point," says Richard Lapchick, the director of the UCFIDES. "They're going to have to increase their efforts." My question: why?

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Wherein you, the readers, talk amongst yourselves

A recent study found that many white college students avoid socializing with blacks not because they don't want to, but because they are deathly afraid of "messing up" — i.e. saying something that might make them seem racist. In your experience, do you buy this explanation? If so, does the black community hold any responsibility for fostering this anxiety? Why or why not?

FOOD FOR THOUGHT A new study from the University of Liverpool suggests that "Madonna-style adoptions" — high-profile, international adoptions that probably should be called Angelina-style adoptions — have produced more orphans instead of reducing the number. Here's how — in EU countries, the numbers of institutionalized children has increased, supposedly because celebs have influenced more people to seek international adoptions. 'Child Psychologist, Professor Kevin Browne, said: "Some argue that international adoption is, in part, a solution to the large number of children in institutional care, but we have found the opposite is true. Closely linked to the Madonna-effect, we found that parents in poor countries are now giving up their children in the belief that they will have a 'better life in the west' with a more wealthy family."' So more orphans all around? Bummer. [Telegraph]

In November of last year, Time predicted that Oprah's endorsement of Barack Obama would not help the senator in his bid to be the President. Almost six months later, it turns out that Oprah's support produced 10,000 volunteers and a wave of donations for Obama's campaign, and he won two out of the three states in which the talk show host stumped for him. Although Oprah's assistance alone cannot a president make, apparently it can prove Time magazine wrong.

But the so-called "O2 effect" has not been a symbiotic relationship. While Obama's camp asserts he has fared well from his relationship with Ms Winfrey, she can't say the same, according to new research from Fordham University.
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When it comes to academic research, scholars often study black Americans through what is called a "deficit perspective," meaning problems and negatives are emphasized. In response to that tendency, a group from Louisiana State University conducted a survey of healthy black marriages, examining why they tend to work and how couples overcome their challenges. The study, which relies on interviews with 30 couples, identifies four key themes.

• The real challenges to African American marriages — most of the couples interviewed lived in the inner city, where the negative factors like violence, poverty, and deficient schools make it difficult to remain married.

• Because of their relative stability, the couples also faced a lot of pressure from outside forces. Friend and family lean on them because they have their stuff together and usually have more liquid assets than their single family members and friends.

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Do you do drugs? If so, you probably also like rap music. How did I know? Because, according to a new study, all rap musicians do is glamorize drugs! And you won't believe their slang.

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As cable newsies quibble over Condi Rice's accurate description of our race relations as the nation's "birth defect" and argue that this country is the best for blacks, only one out of two black and Native American kids are graduating from high school in this country. ONE OUT OF TWO. And why, pray tell, do these self-styled race experts think that is? It's a societal birth defect if I've ever seen one.

A new study from Editorial Projects in Education and America Promise Alliance found that in the top 50 largest major-city school districts, an average of 52 percent of children are completing all 12 grades. In Detroit, the graduation rate is 24.9 percent. In Baltimore, it's 34.6. New York and Los Angeles? Around 45 percent. Out of the 50 city school districts studied, only five topped the national graduation average of 69.9 percent. That's a numer that would sound terrible if I heard it on its own. In compariosn to Detroit's 25 percent, it sounds great.

With the inequalities in the way our nation's poor, rich, minorities, and whites are educated in this country laid bare in studies like this, is there any denying the institutionalized racism that led us here? That keeps us here? There's not, but those same people will keep trying.

HOSTILE MIND, HOSTILE HEART The more cynical and mistrustful your personality, the more likely you are to have heart disease. This, according to a new study, could account for the disproportionate number of blacks afflicted with it. The study found that blacks generally score higher on hostility tests, and the people who score highest on hostility test are most likely to have systolic blood pressure, which leads to heart disease. The implication that black people are hostile is making my blood pressure rise (ha!). But, whatever. This is one very good reason for people of all races to try to relax more. [USAT]

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.

PROBLEMATIC, TO SAY THE VERY LEAST A quarter of teenage girls in the United States have a sexually transmitted disease. That's more than 3 million girls between the ages of 14 and 18, according to a recent study. Sadly, the highest overall prevalence is among black girls — nearly half of the black girls studied had at least one STD compared with 20 percent of white and Mexican American girls. While the numbers may be shocking and terrifying to laypeople like us, doctors say it sounds about right to them. [CNN]

ABC News' John Quinones and his crack team of liars is back to make New Yorkers look calloused and cowardly, and to extrapolate some great truths about human instinct (but mostly just to make New Yorkers look like pussies).

For a special called What Would You Do? airing tonight on ABC, Quinones hired actors to portray public incidents of domestic violence. He then filmed the reactions of people who came across the scenes. The veteran newsman has done this a few times in the past, each time feigning shock when women by themselves walk right by raging men who are clearly unafraid of hurting women. But on tonight's episode, Quinones "[kicked] it up yet another notch" and made the fighting couples interracial. In one case, a white man berates a black woman, in another, a black man kicks his white girlfriend.

Watch above for specifics about what happened, but here's the gist: "As it turned out, race may have been a factor in terms of who intervened, and with which couple. Over two days of shooting, we noticed that women seemed less inclined to intervene when the abusive boyfriend was African-American and the victim white." Why? "African-Americans are stereotypically more aggressive than Caucasians … They [passersby] may have been more hesitant for that reason."

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.

A new poll of Hispanics, Asians, and Blacks across the country uncovered facts that most Hispanics, Asians, and Blacks were pretty much aware of already. When it comes to race, the nation's three "chief" minorities are not on the same page.

About three-quarters of Hispanics and about two-thirds of Asians believe they will progress in this country if they work hard, the survey found. But only 44 percent of African-Americans polled said they believed that hard work would bring them success, and 66 percent of African-Americans said they did not believe that everyone in the United States had an equal opportunity to succeed.

The sample of respondents reflected the demographic makeup of the three groups in the United States population, Mr. Bendixen said. About half of Hispanics and about four-fifths of Asians in this country are immigrants, while 90 percent of blacks were born here. The survey did not ask about the legal status of the immigrants.

It reported that 93 percent of Hispanics, 92 percent of African-Americans and 73 percent of Asians said racial tension was a very important problem in the United States.

In a touching display of optimism, the NYT tried to convince readers that these stats aren't all bad. Like, even though 50 percent of black think that Hispanics are stealing jobs and political power from them, a little less than 50 percent think this isn't true! And although half of Hispanics think blacks are scary criminals, the other half thinks nothing of the sort! Thank goodness for that.

• Utah is the most depressed state in the nation. That sounds right, since many people I know would be pretty depressed if they lived in those there.

• For every 11 lbs women diagnosed with breast cancer gain, they are 14 percent more likely to die.

• Chimps are smarter than college kids. OMG! Newayz, how wuz ur wknd?

• Beware the deadly Chikungungya.

• Do you have a boss who bitches when you call in sick? Send him this.

]• A man is riding a horse across country, visiting HBCUs to raise awareness about the "black experience." Poor horse — in a variety of ways, that's a lot of ground to cover. [WBKO]

• This study is about black people and social networking, but I couldn't really get past the term "African American-fluentials." [BW]

• Connecticut plans to "crack down" on nooses. How? By requiring background checks before people can purchase rope? [AP]

• If at first you don't succeed, then try, try a forum. [CP