Excellent post on this issue. Thanks for the link to my blog! (Readers can find lots of discussion there about these and related issues in the categories "black people in science", "science and society", "minorities in science", "women in science", "science education", and others.)
I just installed postlevels 1.0.9 with Wordpress 2.0.9. I also have the plugin Brian's Latest Comments 1.5.8 installed. When postlevels is activated, all the post titles in the list of latest comments become the same (although the linked URL is correct). Might there be a fix for this available?