"My former colleague Tim Padgett has an unfortunate and deeply problematic article on Sotamayor's effect on the relationship between blacks and Latinos, a subject that major media has never gotten a solid handle on, for reasons that are made clear in Padgett's lede, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in The Atlantic:

" 'Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court is a historic milestone for Latinos, but it resonates well beyond Hispanic pride. It is perhaps the most potent symbol yet of a 21st century rapprochement between the U.S.'s two largest minorities, Latino Americans and African Americans, who in the 20th century could be as violently distrustful of each other as blacks and whites were.'

"One must be clear about what constituted 'violent' distrust 'between' blacks and whites in the 20th century. It meant thousands of whites, in Atlanta, in 1906, assembling on the streets to randomly murder black people. In Springfield, Illinois, in 1908, it meant whites pillaging a Jewish businesses for arms, and then proceeding to the black side of town, attacking black business and black homes, and thousands of black people fleeing for their lives. It meant whites--across the nation--in 1910 assembling in mobs and murdering random black people (On the 4th of July!). The cause? Jack Johnson had the temerity to win the championship. It meant whites in East St. Louis, in 1918, perpetrating a pogrom against the city's black population, and killing over 100 black people because, 'southern niggers need a lynching.' "

"President Evo Morales has turned over land in Bolivia's La Paz province that was owned by former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to peasants," the Latin American Herald Tribune reports.

"Morales gave nearly 500 hectares (1,234 acres) Saturday to descendants of African slaves who live in the coca-growing region of Yungas.

"The National Agrarian Reform Institute, or INRA, expropriated the land from Sanchez de Lozada because it was not performing an 'economic and social function.'"