Pete Souza/The White House

It's fair to call it the Obama Effect: leaders in the black community, old and young, political and cultural, are coming out of the closet to back same-sex marriage. And they are a motley crew, from the legacy NAACP, to the rapper 50 Cent, who just a couple years ago suggested that if you're a man "and you don't eat pu**y just kill yourself damn it. The world will be a better place." (He'd also once tweeted, "Perez Hilton calld me douchebag [sic] so I had my homie shoot up a gay wedding. wasnt his but still made me feel better.")

And now 50 tacitly supports gays getting married.

The Obama Effect.

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This happened.

Did you know that complaining about racism makes you unpatriotic and means that you have a (bad) attitude toward America?

Well, it doesn't, but that's what the New York Post's Abby Schachter suggests.

"Bill Maher pretty much summed up the left's attitude toward the United States when he declared that Barack Obama came up from poverty to become 'the first black president of the racist states of America,' she writes.

For Schachter, of course, this is evidence that, "according to liberals like Maher, nothing has changed in all that time. This country is racist, many liberals believe, so it ever was and so it shall ever be. The election of a black president has done nothing to change our nation's true nature, says the left, because at its heart this is a racist country."

Somehow, Maher's one comment corroborates something about all liberals and suggests that white people get the short end of the stick. Oh, and apparently, the Trayvon Martin case is an example of "the liberal racist narrative."

She really said all this!

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Jezebel's Lindy West has just weighed in on hipster racism, joining the ranks of many who have recently felt compelled by Girls to comment on cool kids' ostensible obsession with all things white.

Now, most of the author's "complete guide" is pretty solid. Basically, West makes the argument that ironic racism -- people pretending to say or subtly implying racist things instead of actually saying them -- has replaced the more overt bigotry of the past.

Some examples cited by West include Navajo panties, white people getting upset that they can't use the n-word for "literary" reasons, and white people thinking that American racism in the U.S. is over because Barack Obama is president.

We totally buy these examples, and and fully agree that this kind of thinking is as smarmy as overt bias.

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Turmoil and tension over Trayvon Martin continues to escalate across the U.S. -- now greatly inflamed by a leaked police report -- and intense discussion of the teen's death has continued in New York.

From Sean Bell to Jateik Reed to Ramarley Graham, the NYPD has long had a very strained relationship with young men of color.

The New York Civil Liberties Union feels that these cases emphasize the need for reform in the NYPD. The organization says that current policing tactics disproportionately target blacks and latinos. NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman chatted with Runnin' Scared about how the Trayvon Martin incident affects civil rights and law enforcement in the city. (Runnin' Scared also reached out to the NYPD for comment. We'll update if we hear back.)

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As New York and the rest of the nation demand answers about Trayvon Martin's death, Councilmember Charles Barron delivered a message on the steps of City Hall this afternoon that was alternatively angry and somber.

Barron, joined by Ramarley Graham's parents and the family of Jateik Reed, asked that the February killing of Graham not be forgotten in light of the Sanford, Fla. shooting. Barron, alongside councilmembers Jumaane Williams and Melissa Mark-Viverito, voiced solidarity with Martin's relatives, calling for police accountability and an end to racial profiling.

But Barron, as well as the other electeds and community leaders present, delivered yet another message: Blacks and latinos had had enough, they said, and tension in New York's minority communities could soon come to a critical point.

Indeed, talk at the press conference quickly moved from Ramarley to riots.

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As anger grows nationwide over the shooting of Trayvon Martin, many in New York have continued to mobilize and speak out against the unarmed teen's death.

Kevin Powell, an activist, Guardian* columnist, and one-time Congressional candidate, is one of several advocates in the city leading the call for George Zimmerman's arrest and a repeal of the stand your ground laws enacted in 20 states.

Powell took the time to chat with Runnin' Scared about Trayvon Martin, and what the tragedy means for young, black men in America and the general state of civil rights the U.S.

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Chief U.S. District Judge Richard F. Cebull's recent comments suggest that being a judge and having good judgment are two completely different things.

An e-mail forwarded to other chief judges by this interpreter of the law, obtained by the Great Falls Tribune on Wednesday, contains a crude joke aimed at President Barack Obama -- in which interracial marriage is compared to bestiality.

Earlier this morning, Cebullwrote an apology letter to Obama, accepting full responsibility and awkwardly concluding with: "Honestly, I don't know what else to say."

The notorious e-mail, titled with the seemingly innocuous subject line "A MOM'S MEMORY," was allegedly sent because he is "anti-Obama," not racist. Check out the text of the e-mail after the jump and decide for yourself.

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More black and Latino students got into New York City's top high schools than in 2011, putting a halt to several years of decreasing admits among these demographics.

The New York Times reports that Education Department stats show that 730 black and Latino students were admitted to top-tier institutions such as Stuyvesant High School and Bronx High School of Science -- 14 percent more than in 2011 and 12 percent more than in 2010.

Blacks got 6 percent of admission offers, while Latinos got 8 percent.

Asians got the highest number of offers for specialized high schools -- 46 percent, according to the Times -- while whites got 23 percent.

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As Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne continue to deal with fallout from the use of the anti-Muslim film The Third Jihad in NYPD training, some Muslim groups are beginning to call for their resignations. A protest organized by the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) met outside City Hall yesterday to demand corrective action by the NYPD. Runnin' Scared talked to Cyrus McGoldrick, the Civil Rights Manager for CAIR, about the group's concerns.

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Straight from the files of "Historical Shit That Can't Be Made Up," we woke up this morning to a pretty unbelievable email from the Thomas Jefferson Foundation with the subject line, "Taste: Chocolate at Monticello."

Oh my, we thought, before opening it. Surely someone in TJ's PR office might be sensitive to and knowledgeable enough of, er, certain Jefferson proclivities to be wary of harping about his "taste" for chocolate!?

Apparently not.

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