Blog Assignment 4

http://www.demos.org/inequality/article.cfm?blogid=253418EE-3FF4-6C82-577DD9D0F5761F04

http://www.demos.org/inequality/article.cfm?blogid=E569229C-3FF4-6C82-5A359B404D13308A

The above links are to blogs on www.inequality.org by Dedrick Muhammad. In them, he speaks about the lack of progress in equality and pay between blacks and whites. Forty years after the Kerner Commission's recommendations for 'the creation of two million jobs, both public and private; fully subsidized on-the-job training for the chronically unemployed; federal assistance to all schools that worked to end de facto segregation; federal funding for year-around compensatory education programs serving disadvantaged children; a uniform national welfare standard to bring everyones' income up to the poverty line; income supplements for those who could work and a guaranteed minimum income for those who could not; and six million new and renovated units of housing for low and moderate income families', the only thing that was instituted was 'anti-riot legislation rather than the social programs' the Kerner Report advocated.

The inequality in pay has not improved much...from $.55 for every white dollar in 1968, to $.57 thirty years later. This even though more blacks are achieving college educations at a higher rate than before, from 30 percent in 1968 to 79 percent in 2002. Over a lifetime, black high school graduates earn $300,000 less, college graduates $500,000 less, and those with advanced degrees earn $600,000 less than whites with comparable educations.

Mr. Muhammad says that, 'In general these students have lived lives segregated by race and class and have not seen the differences in education, life style, and opportunity for the elite of America. The elite of America often times are even less aware of the disadvantages that so many endure.' and 'Today and yesterday, the prevailing white liberal response to racism is/was sympathetic rhetoric and band-aid measures - a poverty program here, an anti-discrimination law there, but nothing that would funnel the kind of economic and educational resources into black communities that might bring clear and substantial progress toward true equality. The white conservative response is/was to blame the African-American for an inferior work ethic and inferior morals.'

This continuing situation does not say anything positive about this country, where we're supposed to exemplify tolerance, equality, and other lofty sentiments. We're running around the world attempting to impose our way of life on others, when we can't take care of the problems we have at home. As Mr. Muhammad claims, 'the Kerner Commission was right, but blacks have been left on the wrong side of inequality'. (400)