Hold on to your seats - it'll be a rough ride to November!

If a woman or a black person is ever to become president, this is the time it can happen. The majority are sick of the extreme rightwingers and the incompetent Bush. McCain is also incompetent, so now it is hard for a Democrat to lose.

While it is true that some black people complain and generalise about whites, some white people complain and generalise about blacks too. Instapunk and Instapundit should look in the mirror when they attack blacks as complaining and generalising about whites. ;)

Something definitely needs to be done about the race issue in America. And we have a solid metric: the percentage of blacks in prison. Let's hope Obama can fix it.

You say: " I am not saying that it is all the white man’s fault or that the black communities in trouble don’t share in the responsibility to improve schools. I am saying that you have made a very one-sided argument that says to me that you lay most if not all of the blame on blacks. If you are not saying that, what are you saying?"

Racial dynamics in New Orleans were such that it was made very clear to whites that they were not welcome to comment on or participate in trying to improve the abysmal condition of the city's public schools. White participation was essentially limited to paying the lion's share of property taxes - along with the city's much larger than widely known black middle class - with the bonus of being publicly blamed for all educational ills. Many, many middle class whites - and blacks - had to scrape up private or parochial tuition for their children's education; it was either that or consign their kids to what had become an educational hell. This system was fostered and perpetuated by the city's black ruling elite. It was a closed, corrupt, and doomed system which penalized absolutely everyone, with the notable exception of those pulling the strings. Many was the time when I'd look up from the local newspaper and think, "You know, I'd cheerfully line up the entire school board and shoot them." I suppose you had to be there to believe it, but this situation was all too real and it was maddening - a classic Catch-22.

You say: "Mayor Daily and the current superintendent of New Orleans schools started out in the early ‘90s to improve their failing schools. They were able to stop social promotions rather quickly and have made significant improvements up until today, but it has been extremely difficult and a lot more needs to be done. You make it sound like it is so simple. I can assure you, it is not."

When we left in July '06, the superintendent of schools was a woman whose name escapes me at the moment, but she was most assuredly not a reformer and hadn't been at the job for very long before Katrina. The previous superintendent, an Hispanic man who truly was a reformer, ran afoul of the school board after about a year on the job and was rather rudely shoved out the door. Can't even remember the name of his predecessor - somebody who left in disgrace with a very large golden parachute... After Katrina, the state took over almost all Orleans Parish schools and since that development, there has been some improvement, thank heaven.

And no, there's nothing simple at all about trying to undo so many years of atrocious management and failure. Lest you think I'm some hardhearted Hannah, many was the time when I would see a small black child skipping down the street and know that, perhaps five years down the road, that child would almost certainly have a face filled with sullen anger and resentment, all interest in learning extinguished. And I would be the enemy.

Shoots off his mouth... As long as black people are angry that is the lens they will be viewed through. It seems every other minority that came to America has made the most of the opportunity. From the Irish to the Vietnamese, they have made their way.

Everyone else came of their free will - in coach.

This is how all black slaves came here:

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/slaveship.htm

Shoots off his mouth... I heard an anecdote on the radio about the speaker sitting next to a black professor on an airplane...

I'd like to hear an anecdote about you on one of these...

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/slaveship.htm

I can't see any other message in your posts.

We fool ourselves when we argue that whites do not know what racial subordination does to its victims. Oh, they may not know the details of the harm, or its scope, but they know. Knowing is the key to racism’s greatest value to individual whites and to their interest in maintaining the racial status quo.

—Derrick Bell, “Racism’s Secret Bonding,” Faces at the Bottom of the Well ~1992

Re the Vietnamese who have settled in America: I have never understood how they could have so little animosity toward the country which had just virtually destroyed theirs. The great majority came here with the clothes on their backs, their professions gone, knowing no English, family members gone. Somehow, the Vietnamese have just dug in, moved on, and started over with a tenacity that's rather incredible.

>Many, many middle class whites - and blacks - had to scrape up private or parochial tuition for their children's education; it was either that or consign their kids to what had become an educational hell.<

...because it wouldn't at all occur to said middle-class whites to put their resources and efforts into helping _fix_ the schools instead of running away? If folks like yourself want good schools, why aren't you fighting/helping to keep them that way? (Answer: because it's easier to blame blacks for your cowardice, laziness, and bigotry. It also gives you all a perfect excuse to self-segregate--and spend the rest of your lives whining about those "inner-city" blacks who ruined everything...)