Reply #100: You seem to have the impression that you know more than

[EFerrari]

this much degreed man with a lifetime of experience working in the community. Let's see if we can address your points backward because as most of them are backward, that might make more sense to you.

In fact, Wright grew his congregation from a small one to one thousands strong so, you are wrong. He is a uniter.

Blacks are vastly underrepresented in the professions, fyi.

The Civil Rights Act wasn't enough to make desegregation successful. What typically happened, for example, is that the black school in the district would be shut down and those kids were sent to the white school. Remember Jena? Desegregation is "old school". We're in Resegregation now. The struggle is never over.

What women hating men has to do with this, only you know in the privacy of your mind.

If you really don't know who did what during Katrina, you might start by watching Spike Lee's documentary.

Blacks were not the only ones in the Civil Rights Movement but it was overwhelmingly their children who were blown up, their churches that were burned down, their people who were beaten, mutilated and killed. For you to minimize that in any way is reprehensible whether you do that out of ignorance or not.

As far as Obama's youth goes, his early life is mixed like most people's lives are. So, yes, in that respect he is typical. No one handed him his talent or intelligence, those are his. No one handed him his academic achievements, those are also his. Have you ever taught at at university? Successful black male students are rare and not because they can't perform but because the deck is stacked against getting to school and then against being able to stay there. It doesn't matter if your parents have money or if they are powerful or not. The stresses are significantly greater for black students than they are for white students. They certainly were when I taught at Berkeley and that is a progressive campus in most respects.

Before you distance yourself from the past, you have to know something about that past just as before you can function adequately in the present, you have to be able to situate yourself in the reality of that present.