The authors compare Black and White college student alcohol and other drug use. Significant differences were noted showing alcohol abuse to be less of a problem for Black students.

This study sought to determine: What influence do background characteristics of high school students have on their perceptions of teaching as a career choice? The independent variables, or background characteristics, were ethnicity, gender, the work status of parents, and grade level. Of particular interest was the extent to which African Americans were receptive to teaching as a career choice. The dependent variable of the study was students' perceptions of teaching as a career. Students perceptions were ascertained from their responses to an instrument administered to over 800 high school students. The inventory sought students' attitudes regarding: (a) the extent to which they valued teaching as a career; (b) the importance they assigned to teaching relative to other professions; (c) the influence of significant others in encouraging them to go into teaching; and (d) their desire to meet the prerequisites to becoming a teacher. Although the findings were in general those to be expected, some surprising ones were also observed.The experiences of students of the 1990s are very different from those of previous decades. Demographers predict that by the year 2000 students of color will comprise 46 percent of school-age youth and that persons of color and women will comprise 80 percent of new entrants to the labor force. Students of color constitute a majority of students enrolled in 23 of the 25 largest school districts in our nation (Gay, 1989;Newby and Dorrah, 1993;Villegas, 1991).

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From its beginnings, America was intended to be a white nation. Being white was the central requirement of the 1790 Immigration and Naturalization Act; it was not intended that people of color, blacks in particular, become citizens. As the founding fathers saw it, America was to be a white nation. This principle was reaffirmed in the 1857 Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott v. Sanford case in which Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, himself a slave holder, writing for the majority ruled that 'the black man has no rights which whites are bound to respect'. Until the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v Board of Education, Topeka and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the citizenship rights of blacks were largely ignored or opposed. As a result of Movement victories, along with a change in immigration laws, America has become a more diverse nation, particularly with regard to people of color. It was this more diverse America that provided the margin of victory for Obama. Given America's history with regard to race, the election of Barack Obama to be president of these United States of America is epochal. The taken-for-granted knowledge is that the president would always be white. There have been other African American candidates for the presidency but their candidacies have been either protest or issue oriented. Either way, they were marginal. In 1984, I was a Jackson delegate to the San Francisco Democratic National Convention. His candidacy was historic in terms of the number of delegates won by an African American but it was a protest candidacy at best. The ''Rainbow Coalition'' was a good idea. It expressed the hopes of the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party. But marginal, it was. The candidacy of Barack Obama was his appeal to bring America together, Red states and Blue states, white and black. His candidacy represented to many an ending to the racial divide. As such, his candidacy was a Critical Sociology 36(3) 371-386