"This is about green -- not black or white. It's about money."

Topic: A plan by business leaders to save the financially imperiled Grady Memorial Hospital by shifting management away from its current board, a plan that has been endorsed by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, several state leaders and officials of Emory and Morehouse medical schools —- which furnish the hospital system's physicians. (AJC)

Jesse Jackson's sidekick Joe Beasley: "It's about race. If we don't know it and don't deal with it, we're just whistling Dixie." (AJC)

Task force co-chairman and chairman emeritus of Georgia-Pacific A.D. "Pete" Correll: "This is about green — not black or white. It's about money." "We simply have got to quit talking about political power and talk about how we're going to pay for care for people of this community. I don't give a damn who's in charge." (AJC)

Bill Shipp: Alas, poor Pete is out of touch. He also is wrong. The Grady Hospital fiasco is about "black and white" and then it is about money.

In Atlanta and most of Georgia (except the mountains), "black and white" is a recurring issue on nearly every public project, ranging from posting a stop sign to rescuing a vital health care facility.

What Joe might have added is this: "Dealing with race means making sure that blacks continue to run Grady, regardless of whether the hospital is bailed out."

[In days gone by racial] problems only occasionally surfaced in the Peach State, and Georgia and its capital thrived.

That was a long time ago. Racial discord now is more prevalent than ever, except now it's blacks who bristle at the idea of giving an inch of hard-earned turf back to whites - even if their opposition means venerable Grady will shortly shut down.

The Grady standoff is . . . the latest example of race standing in the way of progress -- or even maintaining the status quo.