On this day in 1857: In a decision that helped lead to the Civil War, the Supreme Court, in its famous “Dred Scott Decision,” ruled that neither slaves — nor their descendants — could ever become U.S. citizens. The decision is also acknowledged for the influential role it played in altering the national political landscape: It launched Abraham Lincoln’s national political career and ultimately allowed for his election.

Here’s what else happened on this day in history

• A pug competes in a race during the third international pug dog meeting in Berlin on July 14, 2012. (REUTERS/Tobias Schwarz)
  
  
• Pigs race at the Los Angeles County Fair, the largest in the country, in Pomona, Calif., on Sept. 5, 2012. (REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson)

Just because: 11 exhilarating images of animals in mid-race

“I have to say, I never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that, unlike myself, my kids would someday have the opportunity to re-enact America’s slave trade the way my great-grandfather did! How exciting for them! Never mind those silly dolls showing racial equality and putting ‘black Americans’ (hah! is that the word we want to really use here?) in a positive light — no! With this, my kids can experience first-hand what it might have been like to own their very own slave!”

The Django Unchained action figures are receiving a lot of backlash

Chinese model Fei Fei Sun (top left) made history this week as the first Asian model to appear alone on the cover of Vogue Italia. French Vogue reportedly featured a solo Du Juan in 2011, though no British or American Vogue has broken this curious race barrier. 

10 belatedly groundbreaking Vogue covers

(Source: theweek.com)

Meet Disney’s first Latina princess: Sofia. The new princess is already at the center of a heated debate, with critics damning Disney for drawing so little attention to Sofia’s Latina roots. Only when the show’s producers were directly confronted about Sofia’s heritage during a recent press tour did they confirm that she’s Latina. Other tension points: Sofia’s light skin and the fact that she’s voiced by a white actress (Modern Family’s Ariel Winter). The producers simply say the new princess’ ethnicity is being presented as a “matter-of-fact situation rather than an overt thing.”

Watch the trailer for Sofia’s movie

Mia Love, the Republican mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, gave a much-anticipated speech at the GOP convention Tuesday, but MSNBC didn’t broadcast it — nor did it air several other addresses by minority speakers. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

No one could have predicted that racial controversies would become a dominant storyline at the GOP convention, particularly since economic issues are expected to determine the election. Here, a look at four of the GOP convention’s flare-ups over race:

1. Two attendees heckle a black CNN camerawoman 
   In a remarkably ugly incident on Tuesday, two attendees were thrown out of the convention for “throwing nuts at a black CNN camerawoman and saying, ‘This is how we feed animals,’” says David Taintor at Talking Points Memo. Convention officials distanced themselves from the two individuals, saying their behavior was “deplorable.” However, that hasn’t stopped some from seeing the incident as reflective of a virulent streak of racism that runs through part of the conservative base. Others gave the rest of the attendees the benefit of the doubt: The Democratic Party “continually talks about what terrible racist savages Republicans are, yet 99.9 percent of the convention managed to avoid assaulting a lady just because she was black,” says Jesse Taylor at Wonkette.
    
2. MSNBC edits out minority speakers 
   Conservative media outlets are accusing left-leaning MSNBC of cutting minority speakers from its live convention coverage. “If you were watching MSNBC’s coverage,” you might believe liberal assertions that the GOP is “the party of old white people, devoid of diversity, and probably racist,” says Jeff Poor at The Daily Caller. MSNBC viewers were not able to see speeches by Ted Cruz, Artur Davis, or Mia Love, all of whom had been placed front and center to help show the diversity of the GOP’s elected officials. 

4 racial controversies at the GOP convention

Top: Mattel’s affectionately dubbed “Drag Queen” Barbie was made to resemble her cross-dressing designer, Phillipe Blond. She comes complete with a mini dress, a full-length faux fur, and a heavily made up face. “I can already hear the complaints” about this being “an abomination,” says Michele Zipp at The Stir. “Don’t like it? Don’t buy it.

Bottom: Mattel and Nabisco thought they hit marketing gold when they paired America’s favorite doll with its favorite cookie in 1994. Selling in both grocery stores and toy stores, the Caucasian Oreo fun Barbie doll flew off the shelves. When Mattel introduced a black version, it was clear that the company hadn’t given much thought to the fact that the word Oreo can be derogatory — it’s used to describe blacks who are accused of being sellouts to the race.

One of the most emotional moments from the London Olympics: Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang finishes the 110-meter hurdles on one leg after crashing into his first obstacle and injuring his achilles on Tuesday. At the 2008 Olympics, he’d failed to clear a single hurdle, even though just four years prior, at the 2004 Games, Liu became the first Chinese man to claim a gold medal in track and field. This time around, he hobbled to the finish and was met by Balazs Baji of Hungary, who raised Liu’s hand in the air to declare him an honorary winner.

The 7 most heartbreaking Olympic moments

This week, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $175 million to settle charges that it discriminated against thousands of blacks, Latinos, and other minority borrowers between 2004 and 2009. The Justice Department had accused Wells Fargo, the country’s largest mortgage lender, of charging minority borrowers higher interest rates and fees on home loans than it charged white borrowers with similar credit ratings.

Thomas Perez, an assistant attorney general at the department, slammed Wells Fargo for levying the equivalent of a “racial surtax.” People ”should be judged by the content of their creditworthiness and not the color of their skin,” he said. 

A guide to Wells Fargo’s disgraceful discrimination scandal

Cartoon of the day: “Shades of white”

MIKE LUCKOVICH © 2012 Creators Syndicate

More cartoons

 ”I live in the mountains and I want to keep them beautiful,” says the KKK group’s secretary, April Chambers. “I don’t know why anybody’s offended by it.”

Georgia’s Department of Transportation needs all the help it can get. But even in this era of budget crunches, the Peach State’s transportation department isn’t sure it wants help from the Ku Klux Klan, which recently applied to keep a mile of northern Georgia’s Route 515 clean through the state’s “Adopt-a-Highway” program.

“This is simply another attempt by the Klan to somehow portray itself as a kinder, gentler group rather than the terrorist organization that it has historically been,” says Mark Potok at the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Can Georgia legally stop the KKK from adopting a highway? 

(Source: theweek.com)