“If you only preach to the choir,” a black preacher once told me, “you’ll never grow the congregation.” That’s sage advice that Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson and Tom Tancredo ought to take to heart. These five GOP candidates have refused to take part in Thursday’s presidential forum at Morgan State University in Baltimore. They claim to have other commitments.

The second of two forums hosted by Tavis Smiley at historically black higher education institutions, this one was supposed to have all 10 Republican candidates present to answer questions from a panel of black and Hispanic journalists. In June, the eight Democratic candidates showed up at Howard University for the first one.

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Subtle racism interferes with black people’s mental function even more than overt racism does, a psychological study shows.

For whites, who are much less often the targets of prejudice, overt racism interferes with mental function more.

“It appears that blacks are particularly vulnerable to cognitive impairment resulting from exposure to ambiguous prejudice — a level of prejudice whites may not even register,” conclude Princeton University psychologists Jessica Salvatore, PhD, and J. Nicole Shelton, PhD.

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Oh my, this summer has not only seen a return of the race card in sports. Unfortunately, it seems as if the whole race deck has been dealt.

Most recently, of course, Donovan McNabb, quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles, declared that African-American quarterbacks suffer much more scrutiny than their white brethren. It was a particularly interesting observation coming from McNabb, because, if you recall, Rush Limbaugh resigned from ESPN four years ago for saying that the very same McNabb was overrated, inasmuch as the oh-so-sweet white media desperately wanted a black quarterback to succeed.

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Morgan Stanley, the American investment bank, is being sued for allegedly discriminating against borrowers from America’s ethnic minorities.

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), a “fair lending” organisation in the United States, has filed a lawsuit in Washington against the bank claiming that it has deliberately failed to offer credit facilities to “African-American, Latino, Native American, Asian and Pacific Islander communities” solely on the ground of race.

It also brought the lawsuit to the attention of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, because the action also alleges that Morgan Stanley breached disclosure rules by failing to reveal to whom they had offered mortgages. The bank vehemently denies the allegations.

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If demographers are correct that Latinos are the fastest growing minority in the United States, filmmaker Phillip Rodriguez has a question: “Who are these new neighbors?”

He searched for answers in his documentary, “Brown is the New Green: George Lopez and the American Dream.”

The hour-long film, aired recently on the Public Broadcasting Service, explored the way Latinos are perceived by the media and marketers - and how they perceive themselves.

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