Blog bits: who says blogs are only for online reading? If you missed the recent posts at racewire.org, have no fear. Here are a few gems we dug up for you.

JAMES BALDWIN'S AMERICA HASN'T CHANGED

Author and essayist James Baldwin died 20 years ago.

Baldwin's biographer and close friend, David Leeming, called his essays "prophetic," as they articulated an eerily clear-eyed view of America's peril at the hands of what, in Baldwin's day, was politely called the "race problem." Perhaps Leeming has it right, and Baldwin was a soothsayer. But a more plausible explanation is that Baldwin's work remains contemporary because America's racial caste system changed so little over the generations that his writing spans.

Baldwin considered race America's poison pill. And he deftly portrayed Americans of all colors struggling to concoct their own individual antidotes--solutions that are temporary at best and always crazy-making because, at root, the problem is structural not individual.

Today, we still have not reached Baldwin's understanding of race and racism. It remains a collective problem that we insist upon dealing with on an individual basis. As a result, even our greatest triumphs--the end of legal segregation and broadened opportunities for the slim Black middle class--are undermined by broader forces.

--Kai Wright

LET'S JUST GET ALONG