The past isnt dead and buried. In fact, it isnt even past. William Faulkner We do not need to recite the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist between the African-American community and the larger community today can be traced directly to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow segregated schools were and are inferior schools; we still havent fixed them, 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between todays black and white students. Legalized discrimination-where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions or the police force or the fire department-meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between blacks and whites, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persist in so many of todays urban and rural communities. A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for ones family contributed to the erosion of black families-a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods, parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up, building code enforcement-all helped to create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continues to haunt us. Barack Obama, President of the United States of America
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 23:06:18 +0000
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