Lingering Effect: people still are under the impression that descendents of slaves are somehow capale workers

Fred Reed goes to town on how the United States is still paying for slavery...or, as Kathy Shaidle used to put it, "next time America, pick your own damn cotton".

Our American Africans endlessly advert to their problems caused by slavery and how whites need to solve them. Hey, I have a brilliant answer for them: Why don’t you solve your own problems? Let’s start with murder. Every year in Chicago, some 700 lingering effects of slavery get shot to death by other lingering effects of slavery; 300 in Baltimore, 500 in Philadelphia, and 200 in Washington. In addition, at least twice as many are shot but survive. I offer our selvatico citizens a solution: Stop shooting each other.

Whites aren’t shooting you, despite the occasional temptation. You are shooting yourselves. Why is it my problem?

I here offer another brilliant solution to a black problem. Blacks do terribly on the SATs. They don’t do poorly because of oppression. They don’t do poorly because of the lingering effects of slavery. They are the lingering effects. They do poorly because they don’t know the answers. My astute and uniquely insightful suggestion: Try studying.

Bet you didn’t think of that. Try books, those square things with the flappy parts inside. I can’t do it for you. Anyway, why is it my problem?

For those flashing back to Conrad Black articles and searching for a dictionary, selvatico is an Italian word meaning "wild" or "untamed" (which seems to track). In honesty if nothing else I'm grateful for Reed to point out that when you don't feel like trying to wade through the myriad of rules for conjugating Latin, you can just steal for the I-Ties.

In high school, we had tests to find really smart kids, which usually meant Chinese ones, so they could become scientists and cure cancer, or at least come close enough to make it nervous. Now, because of the lingering effects of slavery, we can’t do that either. We’ll just have to keep on having cancer.

See? We’re having an open and honest conversation about race. Aren’t you happy?

Now, let me get historical a little bit. We’ve all heard, maybe 50,000 times, that Martin Luther King Jr. said he wanted his people to be judged by their character, not the color of their skin. The idea’s pretty good, but I’m tired of hearing it and would almost pay you 20 cents every time you don’t say it. But that’s the problem. Whites and Asians do judge you by the content of your character.

As one of the commenters wisely noted, something that's been observed once or twice before....

If there’s a magical button that says “press to undo slavery,” you bet blacks in America would never touch it with a ten-foot pole.

Like Muhammad Ali said, after visiting Africa: “I’m so glad my great grandfather got on the boat.”