I am the son of two people born in large very poor sharecropper families. They were extremely poor, and had to pick cotton in the summer and cut wood in the winter. They were heavily discriminated and the family often cheated yearly when it came time to weigh in. They had to pay to vote, money the family didn't have and wearing clothes that looked like rags - and they were WHITE.

My family grew up and lived right along side the Black community and both were equally treated bad. Very bad history indeed and not that long ago.

IF you want to talk about history, fine - please enter my family's too and millions of descendants of others just like them.

NOW, if you want to talk about the PRESENT, let's just take a look at a few things.

We have a Black president in office and Black head over the Justice department, Black generals in our military, Black diplomats and thousands of well paid Black professors in colleges. All police have to hire BY LAW and X amount of minorities. There are countless Black mayors running town, Black DAs - the list is nearly endless!

Excuse me if I say, I'm not seeing any real excuses. Just a quick visit over to www.heyjackass.com shows just how bad Chicago is and I'm not seeing a whole lot of White on Black crime.

Pick the past all you want. As for reality, the present and look to the future is all that matters.