I was speaking to a friend the other day about a particularly heated moment in a presentation. During her presentation, a white peer I'll call Nancy spoke about the "limited cognitive abilities" of lower-income populations as a basis for excluding populations from her sample group in Los Angeles.

http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2008/07/some_califor...

Excerpted from the article...

"It sounds like one of those stories that conservatives often use to
make government look bad - the city of Sacramento is fining a household
$746 for letting their lawn die to save water. But the real issue here
isn't government - it's whether California will abandon wasteful and
even elitist 20th century values to meet the needs of the 21st century.

This basic tension according to the Sacramento Bee:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/memo-to-oba...
Casting doubt on Obama's "politics of change", which he himself has called "overheated and amplified." Is Obama's move toward the center a reflection of progressive values? Is Obama's move toward the center a losing strategy?