In today's Phoenix, I've got an interview with Brown University's hip-hop scholar Tricia Rose. She penned one of the best-known academic treatises on rap music from its early days, Black Noise, and takes a fresh look at the form with Hip-Hop Wars. She's got a provocative view on what is, arguably, the nation's most important cultural force: hip-hop, she argues, is in a creative crisis and is promoting a dangerously narrow view of black American life.

Turns out Josh Marshall of the high-profile lefty political blog Talking Points Memo used to be a historian-in-training at Brown University, specializing in 17th Century southern New England - who knew? So he's got a particularly well-informed take on the ballot question that would change Rhode Island's official name.

Cliff Montiero, president of the Providence chapter of the NAACP, says he may seek support from his national organization to bring legal action challenging the paucity of minorities in municipal public safety positions in some Rhode Island communities.

Montiero, who made the statement during a taping this morning of WPRI/WNAC-TV's Newsmakers, would not identify specific communities.

As we know, there were lots of dubious claims cast against Obama during the bygone presidential election. Such talk has mostly dissipated, perhaps because of the largely centrist course pursued by the president-elect in the run-up to his inauguration. My Boston Phoenix colleague Adam Reilly looks at what's ahead (in a sidebar, Adam also writes on why tightening up on anti-Obama speech is a bad idea):

In the aftermath of Obama's victory on Tuesday, let's consider some of the dramatic changes in recent American life.

A little more than 30 years ago, the following photo epitomized the violence, hostility, and bitter sense of racial division that was tearing Boston apart, an era masterfully captured in J. Anthony Lukas's classic Common Ground

Ray Rickman, the book-lover and former state rep, sent along the following thoughts, which touch on the special importance of this election for African-Americans:

Events of world-historic significance may be understood through the application of intellectual rigor. But often the only way one can gain an emotional perspective on such complex, confounding occurrences is by viewing them through unashamedly personal prisms.

WJAR-TV's Jim Taricani made a memorable comment on this post, so I thought I'd break it out here for wider consideration.

For this generation, some thoughts from an aging boomer.

I remember vividly standing on a tarmac at RAF Lankenheath Air Base in England in the late spring of 1968. I and 11 other airman stood at the bottom of a stairway that led to the door of an C-141 Starlifter air transport.

Shortly before 9:30 pm last night, a huge roar went up among the Democratic crowd packing the 17th floor ballroom at the Providence Biltmore. Obama had been projected as the winner of Ohio -- a state that Republicans have almost always had to win to gain the presidency -- and the steady optimism among the assembled turned into something more ecstatic.

Action Speaks!, the superb discussion series at AS220, returns tonight (5:30, 115 Empire St., Providence) with another provocative discussion, looking at how the US Census began in 2000 to allow people to identify themselves as being of mixed race.

For the first time, citizens of the United States were not asked to define themselves by checking a single ethnic box in the census.

From College Hill:

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A new report analyzing political attitudes and civic engagement of Latinos in Rhode Island will be released by Brown University on Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008. The report, titled Myths vs. Reality: Results From the New England Latino Survey, was authored by a research team led by Evelyn Hu-DeHart, director of Brown University's Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, and including colleagues from Brown, Roger Williams University School of Law, The Rhode Island Latino Policy Institute and Providence College.

Marc Levitt, AS220, and the Action Speaks! crew do a great job every year in staging a provocative and thought-provoking discussion series. The focus this year is race in America, and tomorrow evening's forum will view this through the prism of Norman Mailer's essay on white hipsters.

I previewed tomorrow's event in last week's Phoenix:

Some in the media, including WPRO's Dan Yorke, have made reference to the "Bradley effect" theory that Barack Obama's poll ratings could be inflated by as much as six percent -- due to the dynamics of race.

Let's recognize that this issue is a lot more complex than that. For starters, as one astute local political observer mentioned to me yesterday, Obama's recent ascent in the polls is driven more by effective organizing on the ground than by the fallout from the fiscal crisis.

-- N4N says Sox beat the Rays in six, although I really have no gut feeling other than anticipating series of close and hard-fought games.

-- Machines with Magnets in Pawtucket has an opening tonight, the Museum of Small Finds, from 7-9.

-- The Dominican American National Roundtable's national conference takes place in Providence this weekend:

Action Speaks!, the compelling annual discussion series at AS220, returns this Wednesday (5:30-7), with a focus on race in America. The first installment this season will examine this event from 1910:

Racist biologist Charles Davenport creates the Eugenic Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

The ProJo has gotten around to deleting the back and forth among two commenters on its Politics blog that began when one of them said that recently deceased Newport denizen and GOP icon Eileen Slocum . . .

once referred to her half-white, half-black grandchildren as "my little pick-aninnies" and got away with it. These were the offspring of daughter, Beryl and her husband, Adam Clayton Powell III.