Slavery Post

I would like to comment on some of the points Egaltine made in her posting.  I agree that to solve the problems of poverty in the United States in the long run we should not focus all our effort on one racial group in particular,  but the reality is that many of the African American communities would not be living in poverty if slavery or segregation or race discrimination had not existed.  Racism in our country still exists today as can be seen through the crack/ cocaine survey and the statistics on the number of blacks in jails.   This is part of the aftermath of slavery which happened hundreds of years ago.  It is because African Americans were discriminated against and to some extent still are today that they are having trouble increasing the numbers of high school graduates or lowering the number of African Americans involved in crime.  

I agree that all people living in poverty need to be helped but I think that African Americans should be given more (not all) of the attention because the position they are in today can be seen as a direct result of how they were treated during segregation and the time of slavery.  It is true that African Americans are not the only people that cannot afford higher education but statistically speaking there are far fewer African Americans in college than their are whites because many African Americans have not had the same opportunities or resources that other students have had.  I think Maggie made a great point when she talked about resource disparities because I also agree that this is where the true problem lies.