Sadly in a related story the struggles that Martin Luther King Jr.  fought to overcome continues ...

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The pain of black America just got worse
Globe & Mail, Aug 22, 2011

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Black Americans have suffered disproportionately from the Great Recession. The net worth of the median black household shrank by half, to a dismal $5,677, between 2005 and 2009. The median white household, while down 16 per cent, is now 20 times wealthier.

Indeed, on almost every data point, blacks as a group are losing ground relative to whites, while inequality among blacks increases.

Life expectancy in Mississippi’s Holmes County, which is 83 per cent black, is 15 years lower than in the white and Asian enclave of Virginia’s Fairfax County, outside Washington.

The rate of HIV infection has stabilized everywhere but in the black community. Gay black males between 13 and 29 accounted for more than half of new infections among gay men in that age group in 2009.

In Arkansas, where courts still supervise school desegregation, one judge’s May 19 ruling summed up the frustration: “Few if any of the participants in this case have any clue how to effectively educate underprivileged black children.”

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Thanks for the reminder.  Martin Luther King was a great man.  Blacks and other minority groups will continue to lose ground and suffer as the present recession grows.

 Very often, what we break can't be fixed. Slavery ended a century and a half ago. Its effects are still with us - and profoundly so. The same with native peoples. We can be sure in runs as deep all over the world - Tibet, Cenrtral America, Afghanistan, the empire of the old USSR....

Whatever we do has consequences that generations have to suffer.

I agree with you Graeme.  The evils of slavery live on, even if there has been a lot of progress--with many blacks moving into the middle class. But the gang culture is, I suspect, something to do with the way families were casually broken up by slave owners....culture can be very hard to change.

Nor will the natives ever be the same.  Whether is was deliberate or accidental (by disease), the point is, there was a huge die-off which left the survivors stunned and without faith in their old ways.  

The survivors also fight to adjust to other Old World things like alcohol, to which they have no exposure to before and have evolved no resistance to it. (Even in the Old World, resistance to alcohol varies, with many in the  north being exposed late--think Irish, Scottish and Russians).

And yes, the already poor always suffer the most in a recession.

Change comes so rapidly now, that we all become victims of it. I was a child when radio ruled supreme. It was a major factor in weakening t he churches since Sunday evening was prime time on radio. Thus the rapid waning of Sunday evening services.

TV came along, and weakened society by the passivity of our role in seeing it. Now, TV is weakening in the face of computrers I wonder what effect that will have on literacy.

All of these things have changed churches, family, individiuals and the community.I was born into a world in which alcohol and tobacco were sinful. Now, cocaine is widely accepted.

We are, like so many people of this continent's history, a people bewildered by change.  And perhaps not adjusting to it well at all.

What greater enslavement than to words we don't understand and don't wish to know ... so creation put em way out there according to Webster's definition of intellect ... Afar People like Pharaoh ... a real stretch of the imagination that some Mensa dips into once in a while ... but with humble care.

Be cautious it is not a normal sane dimension Alice ... once your in it you have to get out the other's Ide ... IT's a crossing incidence you know ... infinite progression ... light wobbling goes on and on as if drunk in several dimensions ...

Unknown words spoken to an authority can raise the Ire of the subject to a fever pitch against the object of his wrath who told him something that indicated a flaw in the personality ... an unknown word ... like a God just lying there on the yeoman! And the authority is mad? That's the way it is in an upset world far away from the madden crowd that thinks in profusion ... blooming idioms? Now the Queen of Hearts would say off with their heads as if the heart was an insane manna ... or when there is it just a natural leaving of the senses behind as disciples.

Let us think about that later my dears while we in Joie Tae Z'n the non-intellectual bunch that's fallen far from divined philosophy ... Sophisticated and fractured, or just bifurcated effect ... that's A'B'D in arch ache 'n Hebrew! King JaIM's outlawed that for his hatred of ambiguity ... couldn't see through the dog of Angling Saxon Maw ... that bag passed on west ... the hunger to be free of responsibility of anything ... practically nothing as the knowledge of God goes ... which is all-that-is ... love of everything? Captivated in High Saac, Bode an Nos. in one scientific expression that say it all as infinite. Mortal powers like Romantic sorts and Jui¢ of Jude Ache'n sorts just can't believe there's something bigger in eM as a twisted story ... equivalent to a warped space of mind ... out there a piece! It's thin and naked space where rich thoughtless people like to go Toby antisocial ... with a Dickensonian twist of the mouth like a tongue with a split understanding ... divine devil he be brudder of gods ... but they don't know about such intimate relations within the self ... they can't see the phoqah up coming ... they din't know sire ...

Did you know the only way to express true satyrs ...? It God's underhanded way with learning for those that don't wish to know ... speaks to something hard in side eM ... calous Coliseum ... internal confinement of the philosophers ... hard for some to get out of and difficult for others to get into ... like a stone you felt it causes you to sink in the Shadow at night ... to learn anything new at all .. we couldn't do wit could we? Thus the Stoics ... Sophisticatedly calm ... in the pool of ignorance ... no Sea eMs ... the udder ones ... creations of god's bust ... deux wins ... mediums loose ... thinking people go elsewhere .. only way out of such enigma ... laugh yourself toad ethe in unknown ambiguities ... what the other can't see in ... God's Word? They didn't wanna be far from their emotions ... in which case yah gotta wonder about how this story got to be over a large parcel of presence ... A'Don's to mortal ... then altered to deep six'd ... that chi kyn for yah ... undescended in parts and mortal cannot understand biology without a story!

Thus the myth of the metamorphosis of psyche ... we believe it is institution when it is out and about ... but Hoo'd Know if they don't get out themselves and move ... motive'cation of the synaptic gaps ... rapturous ... if you can get under the fabric! 

Imagine some folk say they don't believe in chaos theory or even butterflies from Ellen Ur presence ... perhaps they just don't know chi's Eire ...