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As the paper has reported, President Bush will honor a High Point volunteer and Youth Focus Inc. Tuesday as part of his visit to Greensboro.

Donna Hudson Turner of High Point will receive the President's Volunteer Service Award to her 25 years of service to Hospice of the Piedmont, even after suffering a stroke.

Youth Focus, meanwhile, is a nonprofit that operates several agencies aimed at at-risk youth.

In the interest of full disclosure, I know so much about Youth Focus because I served on its board for several years.

I also volunteered with one of the agencies under its umbrella, Big Brothers Big Sisters.

The president will recognize its Mentoring of Children of Prisoners program.

Good for Youth Focus.

It is a well-run, well-led organization that makes a significant difference in the lives of young people.

The president has made a very wise pick.

An irate caller phoned Monday. The woman, an African American, wasn't so sure Barack Obama can call himself the same. Or whether the rest of us should, either.

An African American is someone who is descended from American slaves from Africa, she said. Obama does not qualify.

And she was pretty worked up about it.

A series of letters to the editor have argued that point as well. One of the more recent letters contended that Obama arguably has a bigger claim to the term "African American" than other Americans of color.

Still others have disagreed that Obama isn't the first black president. He is "bi-racial," since his mother was white and his father was Kenyan.

This bothers me a little, as if it gives some people the license to say, "Well he's like Tiger Woods ... not a regular, garden-variety black person. So he's OK "

Hold on. This gets curiouser.

Philip van Lidth de Jeude of Carrboro writes: "Although his mother was ... a Caucasian woman originally from Kansas, his father was a foreign student from Kenya, which is a country in Africa. Thus, if the truth be known, he is more truly an African American than most of those in this country designated with that term.

"Considering that the ancestors of most African Americans lived in the United States for at least a couple of generations, there isn’t very much about them that is African except the origin of some distant ancestors. And if the truth be known, most of them are multi-racial, as we define the term, as there is practically no one in that ethnic group who doesn’t have some admixture of Caucasian, Native American or some other ethnic group."

On his last point, especially, I agree. All you have to do is look around to see how many hues black folks come in. In the racial parlance of apartheid South Africa, many, if not most of us would be considered "colored."

Some states wrangled with definitions by passing laws that decreed racial fractions. If you were such and such percentage of one race or another, that's determined how you were classified.

That, of course, led to some people being considered one race in one state and a different race in another.

The norm I grew up with was much simpler: If your physiology contained even the teeniest fraction of "black" blood, then you were black. Period.

Whiteness was purity. Blackness was, well, everything else.

That's why it was possible for a black person to have a lighter complexion than a white person. Some people in the black community (which has its own hangups about color) derisively described these folks as "high yellow."

And it's why some black people actually "passed" as white in the days of segregation. (See the melodramatic old weepie, "Imitation of Life.")

Then, of course you could really split hairs and point out that a white immigrant from Africa could be as accurately called an African American as anyone else.

Color me exasperated.

As for what the point is of all this debating back and forth, I am not sure.

Is Obama the first bi-racial president?

Is he the first black president?

Is he the first African American president?

I'd vote for all of the above.

But I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

One thing I am certain of: No one who looks like him has ever before occupied the Oval Office.

Let's just say he is the first person of color to be president.

And call it a day.

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No matter how you feel about his job performance, there is no way a 15-minute evaluation of City Manager Mitch Johnson could be thoughtful or substantive.

But that's what the City Council did last night in closed session.

Johnson was not fired, as some City Council members would like to see, but neither did he get a raise. His pay remains $179,000 a year.

Of course, the city plans a salary freeze for all employees beginning in January. This may simply foreshadow that.

The discussion of Johnson's performance and his future, unfortunately, has devolved into a battle of personalities and politics. The council could fix that very easily by tying the manager's annual appraisals to specific goals and measurable results.

He either accomplishes them or he doesn't.

That would be fair and logical and keep the bickering to a minimum.

But don't hold your breath.

It comes as no surprise that UNCG would at some point replace tiny Fleming Gym as its home basketball court with the Greensboro Coliseum.

It is surprising that the Triad’s largest university plans to do it so soon. As in next season.

New Chancellor Linda Brady has made no secret of her desire to partner with the coliseum as a means to elevate the profile of the Spartan hoops program.

Athletics in turn can help market the up-and-coming institution.

And basketball is a much more practical — and less expensive — means to do that than, say, UNC-Charlotte’s ambitions to build a football team, from the turf up.

But I figured they’d take a more measured approach, with a few games at the coliseum, increasing each season until the entire home schedule moved there.

I’d thought that because the coliseum is a big place that can swallow a small crowd, even with the upper-deck curtain drawn.

UNCG might do very well if and when it can schedule ACC teams there -- especially Duke and Carolina.

But the rest of the games could be a struggle. And nothing sucks the atmosphere out of a game as effectively as a teeny crowd in a humongous arena.

Even No. 1 Carolina’s nationally televised game Wednesday night against Michigan State lacked electricity because it was played in a football stadium, Detroit’s Ford Field.

The crowd of more than 25,000 would have packed the Dean Dome. But in Ford Field, the vast sea of unfilled seats made the place look empty and desolate.

That said, you’ve got to admire UNCG’s vision and ambition.

P.S: While they’re at it, UNCG ought to revive its annual backyard rivalry with N.C. A&T at the coliseum.

Here's an item likely to fuel fresh skirmishes in the war of words over the War on Christmas: The library at UNC-Chapel Hill has ceased displaying Christmas trees in its lobby.

I can imagine this might spark a letter to the editor or two. Let 'em flow, let 'em flow, let 'em flow.

UNC-CH Chancellor Holden Thorp responds, in an e-mail to the The Daily Tar Heel on Christmas trees and the Southern Part of Heaven:

Departments can choose to put up a tree or not. And if you take a walk across campus, I think you’ll see that. The façade of Memorial Hall, our major performing venue, is fully decorated for the holiday, and The Nutcracker is its major December attraction. Student Stores is like any retailer this time of year. They have a tree decorated with Carolina ornaments in the window and, in the store, there is a mantle decorated with Carolina stockings. The Student Activities Fund Office has a Christmas tree in its window. There’s a big Christmas wreath with a Carolina-blue ribbon on it in the Student Union. Our own Carolina Inn is again featuring its Twelve Days of Christmas displays throughout the hotel. And just as we have for the last 59 years, our Morehead Planetarium and Science Center is featuring The Star of Bethlehem.

In short, there's plenty on Christmas cheer on campus.

Four men beat and robbed Martin Eakes, last week as he was leaving his downtown office.
It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. And we actually mean that.

Eakes, 54, founded the Self-Help Credit Union, which advocates for fair lending practices and helps people who couldn’t otherwise afford them get home and small-business loans.
Self-Help began in Durham but operates offices in other cities, including one on North Elm Street in Greensboro.

Eakes suffered a severed bicep in the attack and needed 15 stitches in his forehead , reports the News & Observer of Raleigh — a painful price to pay for a wallet and a cell phone.
Thankfully, he is recovering.

Sadly, bad things can and do happen, to even the very best of us.

This week's column, adapted from an earlier blog post:

An irate caller phoned last week. The woman, an African American, wasn’t so sure Barack Obama can call himself the same. Or whether anyone else should, either.

An African American is someone who is descended from American slaves from Africa, she said. The president-elect does not qualify.

And she was pretty worked up about it.

Numerous letters to the editor have argued that point as well. One of the more recent letters contended that Obama arguably has a bigger claim to the term “African American” than most other Americans of color.

Other letter writers have complained that Obama hadn’t made as big a deal about his white mother as he ought to. (Actually, it was nearly impossible not to hear her compelling story, in Obama’s books, in campaign ads, in his thoughtful Philadelphia speech about race and in print and broadcast coverage of the campaign.)

Still others have disputed that Obama is the first black president. He is “bi-racial,” they say, since his mother was white and his father was Kenyan.

This bothers me a little, as if it gives some people comfort in viewing Obama in the same light as Tiger Woods — that is, as not a regular, garden-variety black person.

It gets curiouser.

Letter writer Philip van Lidth de Jeude of Carrboro argues that Obama’s white mother and Kenyan father make him “more truly an African American than most of those in this country designated with that term.

“And if the truth be known,” he added, “most of them are multi-racial, as we define the term, as there is practically no one in that ethnic group who doesn’t have some admixture of Caucasian, Native American or some other ethnic group.”

Van Lidth de Jeude has a point. In fact, some black people prefer not being called African American. But the term’s growing acceptance is rooted in the need for many more of us to reclaim roots and self-awareness that were systematically stripped during slavery.

On van Lidth de Jeude’s final point, I fully agree. All you have to do is look around to see the many hues of black folk. In the racial parlance of apartheid South Africa, many, if not most of us, would be considered “colored.”

So vexed and confused did it become about who’s what and why, Americans even at one time created a twisted brand of racial math.

Doug is right.

The president-elect should light up if he wants to.

But for the sake of his own health and his family's, I hope he'll choose to kick the habit once and for all .

As for the role model thing, it's a good point. He is one of the most powerful and resonant role models to come along in at least a generation. If he'd stick to his desire to quit, successfully, he'd encourage a lot of others, either to stop, or never to start in the first place.

I remember a Sports Illustrated cover in the 1970s depicting White Sox slugger Dick Allen juggling baseballs and puffing happily on a cigarette.

I was a only teen-ager. And 40 years later, I still remember.

I had heard rumors that something big might be shaking loose in county government.

Now it appears that it was. David McNeill will be out soon as county manager.

In a deal concocted by an unlikely alliance -- new commissioners Chairman Skip Alston and Vice Chairman Steve Arnold -- Finance Director Brenda Jones Fox reportedly may step in as interim manager and Sharisse Fuller, the county Human Resource director, as her deputy.

We hear that the commissioners (or at least six of them) wanted to replace McNeill because they preferred someone with a long-range vision of five to 10 years.

Which is ironic, since county managers around here typically don't last that long.

McNeill, of course, replaced Willie Best, who was forced out two years ago.

Yankees managers have more job security.

This week's column.

It comes as no surprise that UNCG would at some point replace tiny Fleming Gym as its home basketball court with the Greensboro Coliseum.

New Chancellor Linda Brady has made no secret of her desire to partner with the coliseum as a means to elevate the profile of the Spartan hoops program.

It is surprising that the Triad’s largest university plans to do it so soon. As in next season.
So far as school and coliseum officials are concerned, the future is right now.
The plan’s selling points are obvious: The coliseum desperately needs an anchor tenant. It has lacked one since pro hockey went belly up here. Brady, who readily admits to being a sports fan, wants a big-time basketball program at UNCG. And not just for the fun of it.
If UNCG can schedule even one or two big-name schools in the coliseum, that probably will boost recruiting. Better players mean more victories and a shot at the NCAA tournament.
Athletics in turn can help market the up-and-coming institution and help it shed its “commuter school” label.

And basketball is a much more practical — and less expensive — means to do that than, say, UNC-Charlotte’s ambitions to build a football team, from the turf up.
As UNCG’s footprint inevitably creeps toward Lee Street and High Point Road, the coliseum makes sense as a home arena.

But this won’t be easy. The team has averaged only 1,118 fans per game at Fleming Gym over the past six seasons, 1,394 last season (by comparison, the city’s other Division 1 school, N.C. A&T, averaged 3,245 fans in 2007-08).

Even curtained off to a 7,613-seat capacity, the coliseum is a big place. UNCG might do very well if and when it can schedule ACC teams there — especially Duke and Carolina. But the rest of the schedule could be a struggle. And nothing sucks the atmosphere out of a game as effectively as a teeny crowd in a humongous arena.

Then there is the city’s spotty record, at best, as a spectator sports town. Despite the presence of a first-rate facility in the coliseum, minor-league teams come and go so fast it’s hard to remember their names.

A violent Brinks robbery Monday at Friendly Center has claimed the life of an armored truck guard.

The man died from a gunshot wound.

This type of thing doesn't happen in Greensboro. Certainly not at Friendly Center. Right?

Well, not exactly. Banks at Friendly have seen armed robberies before, but the shopping center is widely viewed as one of the safer places in the city.

An act like this seems to indicate both desperation and calculation

The robber apparently planned the heist, from the timing of the Brinks cash pickup at the Old Navy store to his disguise that included hospital scrubs and a red wig.

Despite the tragic outcome, at least no one else was hurt. The robber fired two shots.

And it was heartening to see the role bystanders played in trying to keep the guard alive.

Police say the suspect is a black man with a dark complexion.

Odds are, that would be the case.

Whenever a crime of this nature occurs, I close my eyes and pause and hope it does not involve another black man. Too often it does.

Make no mistake, bad people of every shape and size and color commit crimes. But it especially sickens me every time it is someone who looks like me.

This has got to stop. Too many black men are in prison and in the Guilford County Jail. Too many commit crimes. Too many kill one another.

You could argue, effectively, that many of the people who commit this kind of crime are the products of a process that begins when they are children, in broken, impoverished homes and underperforming schools.

But this does not excuse what happened Monday. Nothing does.

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Even though that infamous shoe-throwing incident in Iraq this week was tailor-made fo editorial cartoonists, I haven't been comfortable running most of them. So I haven't.

On the surface, it was a hoot, and captured, from start to finish, on video.

"The Daily Show's" John Stewart marveled at President George W, Bush's reflexes.

But such a display, by a journalist no less, was beyond inappropriate. Despite all the ad nauseum pronoucements about "the liberal media," the reporter would have been fired in a heartbeat in the United States.

And either one of the shoes could have caused injury to Bush, who is, by the way, a head of state who was meeting with Iraqi media.

No matter how you feel about the man, attacking him in that manner was wrong, undignified and even dangerous.

You have to wonder, finally, why the Secret Service's reflexes weren't as quick as the president's.

Richard Prince weighs in.

This week's column.

New Guilford commissioners Chairman Melvin “Skip” Alston says the successor to County Manager David McNeill ought to be “somebody that has the vigor, the motivation, the wisdom and the desire to really move this county forward and take it to another level. Somebody who can come in here with a vision and be able to listen to what the 11 members have to say.”

Good luck.

Good luck in the search and good luck to anyone daring — or dumb — enough to step forward.
If past is prologue, he or she, too, will be shown the door. Guilford County has seen four county managers over the last five years.

I’d give better odds for job security to a Yankees manager.

When a trio of former state Supreme Court justices wrote a letter to the editor during the November campaign, Becky Layton of our staff called each individually to ensure authorship.

If we can't confirm who wrote a letter, we won't publish it, plain and simple.

Here is one good example of why we take pains to verify the identity of letter writers.

As a Carolina alum, I am as big a fan as any, especially during basketball season.

I even have renewed my fickle acquaintance with Carolina football, nearly cheering myself hoarse from the cheap seats in Kenan Stadium when the team beat Georgia Tech during homecoming this season.

But I dunno about one of the more recent additions to the university's administrative staff.

The mother of Tar Heel hoops All-America star Tyler Hansbrough was hired on Dec. 8 as associate director of development of the dental school.

Her primary responsibility will be fundraising -- and odds are that a woman named Hansbrough should do just fine in that capacity.

UNC-CH officials insist this deal is strictly on the up and up and the NCAA has raised no red flags. NCAA rules prohibit special arrangements for student-athletes and their relatives.

After all, Tami Hansbrough’s selection as her son leads an undefeated basketball team in scoring could be just a bizarre coincidence.

What, us favor her because of her blood ties to Tar Heel hoops? say school officials. Oh, blue heavens no.

They flatly deny that the athletics department did anything to give Tami Hansbrough an advantage.

Like Dean Smith wearing a Wolfpack-red blazer, this just doesn’t look good.

And in the wake of the Mary Easley brouhaha at State, you'd think Carolina officials would have thought more than twice about it.

This week's column.

How much have Becky Layton and Elma Sabo meant to the News & Record editorial staff?
About as much as they’ve meant to one another.

When Elma was expecting her second child, she began to sense what seemed to be labor pains while working at the paper.

Concerned that she was about to give birth two weeks early, Elma immediately went to her doctor’s office, where she was told not to worry. It wasn’t time yet.

Trusting her mother wit over the experts’, Becky insisted on driving Elma home to Mebane anyway, rather than allowing her to drive herself.

Good thing, too. Not much later, it became clear: Little Laura did intend to be born that day. With Elma’s 3-year-old in tow, Becky rushed the mother-to-be back to Greensboro. Praying as she zoomed along I-40/85, Becky whisked her blue van to Women’s Hospital,. Hours later, Laura, now a fourth-grader, was born.

Coincidentally, last month marked the 10th anniversary of that adventure. And coincidentally, this month marks another milestone for both women, this one more bittersweet. Elma and Becky, who have worked together for nearly two decades — and who have been integral members of our workplace family — are leaving us.