A fighting chance.(Editor's Note)(Editorial)

These days everyone seems to be spoiling for a fight. Clinton climbing back in the ring with Limbaugh. The ghost of Reagan against the phantom menace of evil empire past. All of Western civilization, if Samuel Huntington is to be believed, in an epic clash with the rest of the world--something which Bush, Cheney & Co. are determined to pull off.

Mere months from the big November day, the stakes go well beyond Kerry or Bush. More than 60 percent of African Americans say they believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, according to the National Urban League's annual report. This attitude is well-founded given that today almost 29 percent of blacks live below the poverty line and more than 70 percent of black children attend segregated schools.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

More Americans are also feeling a growing unease. A Pew Research Center poll in May found that 61 percent of voters were dissatisfied with the direction of the country. Even mainstream pundits have declared that the U.S. is at a critical moment of choice--a nation teetering between corporate plutocracy and the promise of a democratic republic, between the rise of a Christian theocracy and the separation of church and state.

For a nation so shaped by race and racism, the color lines are also drawn more deeply than ever: between immigrant dreams and a fortified security state. Between the rich and poor, an income gap at the widest it has been in 75 years. Between the 1.2 million blacks and Latinos serving time in prison and the zero black and Latino senators serving ...