re: New Orleans Residents get in altercation during TV interview.....

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Frankly, looking at it historically and not being racist at all, these communities aren't that historically removed (240 years isn't that long) from the slaves. If you look back, things could probably be traced directly to that. An entire subset of society that was literally raised to be subservient was set free and expected to thrive. Forty acres and a mule doesn't prepare one to go from slavery to a contributing member of society. I don't know the solution at this point but it would be a fascinating topic for a PH.D. to work on.*

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The question of politicians’ track record in managing economic activities vanishes into thin air, just as other things vanish into thin air by a magician’s sleight of hand on stage. Another of the magic feats of political rhetoric in our time is to blame “a legacy of slavery” for problems in the black community today. The repulsiveness of slavery immediately seizes our attention, just as effectively as the attractiveness of a magician’s scantily clad female assistant or the distraction of a flash of light or a loud noise on stage.

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Here again, rhetoric distracts attention from questions about logic or evidence. The “legacy of slavery” argument is not just a convenient excuse for bad behavior, it allows politicians to escape responsibility for the consequences of the government policies they imposed.

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Not only was the poverty rate going down, so was the rate of dependence on government to stay out of poverty. Teenage pregnancy rates were falling, and so were rates of venereal diseases like syphilis and gonorrhea. Homicide rates among non-white males fell 22 percent in the 1950s.

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Black labor-force participation rates, which had been higher than white labor-force participation rates in every census from 1890 to 1960, fell below white labor-force participation rates by 1972, and the gap has widened since then. Homicide rates among non-white males reversed their decline in the 1950s and soared by 75 percent during the 1960s.

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