>>>What some seem to have forgotten about the past they remember so fondly is it was a great place to be a white male. It wasn't a great place to be black. It wasn't a great place to be a woman. Some things have gotten better.
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>>True, it wasn't utopia. And what many, particularly on the left, have forgotten, is that not ALL white people are rich. My family came from the farm, where they worked in the fields - sharecropping. The only difference between them and the blacks, was they could use the white restroom and drink from the white fountain. Otherwise, they were just white trash.
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>You've left out one of the most important differences--the quality of schools. While I suspect even the white schools (in what I'm assuming was the South) weren't anywhere near as good as their counterparts up north, they still got the lion's share of funding and thus, were able to offer a lot more than the black schools.
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>Tamar

It is worth noting that Detroit spends over $13,000 per child per year. That's $4,000 per year more than is spent here in an affluent suburb with 94% going to college.

It is also worth noting that prior to social programs that were well-intentioned ( and if they had worked would have been not only social justice but worth 10 times the price ) the rate of single parent "families" in the African American community was very similar to - and in many areas less than - that of whites.

No one can argue that the current economic standing of the African American community is worse today than it was in 1952 - but the incredible statistics of children growing up with no responsible male figure in the household would be absolutely shocking to any black family of the 40s or 50s.

Sometimes enabling cultural changes for fear of offending or because of one's own (often misplaced) sense of collective guilt gets exactly the opposite consequences from those intended. When social engineering is never results tested, things can spiral out of control very dramatically. I remember NYC in the 70s very well.

I realize Thomas Sowell is not authentically "black" by the standards of white liberals and the black leaders who feed off their guilt, but he is definitely worth reading on the subject.